


The Empty Space Between The Stars

by damnzam



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: A mess of inner monologues, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Galen Erso Rebel Spy AU, Plot extends all the way to the original trilogy, jyn and cassian are so dramatic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-09-17 10:11:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 65,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9319124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnzam/pseuds/damnzam
Summary: Jyn Erso is a story, a nine-year-old girl who grew up on a farm and died on a farm. This is the story Cassian Andor knows, the story that Galen told him.That Jyn Erso is dead, even if she isn't. She is here, and she is alive.





	1. The Things We Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Stardust Destroyers**

_In the mission to retrieve Galen Erso from Lah’mu, one Imperial starship descended into atmo and initiated a shoot-out between Imperial death troopers and Rebel soldiers. Extraction of Galen Erso was unsuccessful. Erso witnessed taken aboard Imperial starship. Retreated to ships. Casualties include Erso’s wife and daughter, Commander Jorge Follante, Sergeant Paulis Jettson…_

**Galen doesn’t continue reading. He** **doesn’t** know any of the other names. They’re empty faces to him. Lyra, he saw her go down right before Orson pulled him onto the transport and the firefight began… but Jyn, _his stardust._

The account is dated years ago, nearing a decade. His stardust has been dead for almost ten years. Jyn has been dead. Jyn is—

Mon Mothma takes the holodoc from him. “We apologize for the time it took to find you, and for your loss. We had a funeral for most of them, but we couldn’t find the bodies of your family.”

Of course they couldn’t. Orson retrieved Lyra’s body, claiming that no one would give her a proper funeral and she would have been left to rot on Lah’mu. Jyn must have been distant, already close to the hideout within the hills when they found her. The troopers saw her and shot her. The Empire killed a child. They killed _his child_. Galen closes his eyes to banish the thought. He returns his attention to the pallid woman before him.

The ex-Senator tells him of the Council’s immediate course of action when they realized his importance in Imperial Weapons Research, years ago. Galen finds irony in how both the Empire and the Rebellion decided to act at the same time.

“Some of those on the council debated whether or not to leave you to the Empire,” Mothma informs him. “Others, myself included, hoped that you might be capable of breaking down the Empire from the inside.”

Galen ponders on that. The battle station, Orson’s plans, will be realized with or without him. If he were to spearhead the project, he can sneak in some sort of flaw—a weakness that the Alliance can exploit.

Now, as the chrono blinks the time, the engineers on Eadu believe him to be on a transport for Coruscant. If Galen does it right (or wrong, depending on which way you look at it,) he can break the Empire from the inside just as Mothma says.

He pauses before speaking. “Send me back. I can still do just that.”

It’s dangerous. If the Empire discovers him, they can’t risk a mission to get him out. But even Orson admitted Galen had learned how to lie. That’s all spies need: the ability to lie. He’s sure he can do it. He just needs Mothma’s trust.

She purses her lips. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He is returned by some rebels, under the guise of pirates, for a ransom fee. Orson pays it duly. “I doubt you will be allowed on a transport for some time, old friend,” Krennic chides. “Since pirates might have just learned your worth.”

In a lunchtime meal line, he meets Bodhi Rook. The news of the pilot’s defection spreads three months later. Along with Bodhi, he sends a message to the Alliance. Galen hopes that the young pilot has found them.

Ever so often, a strange security droid walks up to Galen with every second shipment of kyber crystals. The first time, Galen feared that perhaps the Empire had learned what he had done. He almost yelled about a droid malfunction—before, of course, the droid clamped his mouth shut. Following the security droid is always a young man, no younger than Bodhi.

And since Bodhi became one with a walking target, it is through this young man that Galen sends messages and updates to the Alliance.

There are several droids, though Galen searches for the one trailed by Lieutenant Andor. As he finds them on the deck, he walks swiftly, palming the holodisc between his fingers. K-2SO drops a box of crystals on the platform and subtly holds out his hand, enough for Galen to pass and drop the holodisc.

Galen makes another round and sees Lieutenant Andor’s subtle smile as he and his (badly) reprogrammed droid climb the ramp back up to the ship. He has known Cassian Andor for almost three years and in his mind he thinks how much he would have wanted for Jyn to meet him. He and Galen didn’t really talk often, except for the few meals they share if the shipments take too long, but still he’d have wanted to introduce them.

They sit together at a table. K-2SO is on Cassian’s ship. A security droid isn’t meant to trail a cargo pilot everywhere, and there are hardly any KX-series droids in the mess hall.

“Bodhi’s gone missing,” Cassian says once, with full force and impact. He doesn’t whisper it, though the chatter in the hall makes for a good mask.

The gruel doesn’t make it to Galen’s mouth. “Pardon?”

“The Alliance sent him to Jedha.” The captain informs him between bites of food. “He is from Jedha, you see. But he was there for a mission. I don’t know all the details, but I do know that he hasn’t come back. And he was sent days ago, for a mission that could have been in-and-out at best.”

“You say he’s from Jedha. Can’t he be visiting family?”

Cassian shakes his head, “Then he would have sent a transmission.”

“What was he there to do?”

There could be silence, if not for the distant murmurs from all the others in the room.

“Bodhi was seeking out a rebel extremist. A Partisan leader: Saw Gerrera.”

The name is familiar. The face is not. But Galen knows the man. Or, Lyra did. Before the rebels came to Lah’mu, Saw was their escape plan, both in Coruscant and in Lah’mu. Perhaps they should have called him. Saw could’ve saved his daughter.

Galen remembers an old holomessage, made years ago, to Saw. He made it before he found out about Jyn. He lost the holodisc, though he thinks he might’ve just disposed of it.

“Hey,” Cassian waves his hand over Galen’s face. “What is it now?”

He tells him everything about Saw.

 **Jyn Erso can still close her eyes and** see Imperial ships descend on their farm in Lah’mu. Some people of the Alliance were already there in their house, bags of the Erso’s belongings slung over their shoulders. Jyn’s mother fiddled with a computer until it began to smoke. A man with a burgundy cape looked at Jyn and held his finger to his lips. Once the computer started looking like it wouldn’t work for years, her mother pulled her close as they escaped to the outside. Jyn could see the black troopers storming their house as a man in white screamed orders.

Her father was walking across the farm, to the man in white. Jyn and her mother and everyone else, they ran. Her mother’s hold on her was unrelenting. She whimpered as she slipped against the hill, but still her mother didn’t let go.

Jyn looked to her father and the man he was speaking to. Something about him was almost familiar. “Mama,” she tugged at her wrist, “Mama, I know that man.”

Her mother looked at her with a sad gaze. Jyn could feel the grip on her wrist soften. They stopped running.

“Wait here,” her mother said to the rebels with them. Jyn could see the same man from earlier glare, but she moved her eyes away to look to her mother. She pulled Jyn into a hug. “Stay with these people, Jyn. Promise me. Whatever your father and I do, we do to protect you. Do you understand?”

She stretched away to look Jyn in the eyes. Jyn couldn’t find her voice easily. “I—“ she stammered, “I understand.”

Jyn still doesn’t understand.

Her mother took out her necklace with the shining crystal and held it out to her. “Trust the Force.” Jyn’s mother made a smile. She held Jyn again in another hug, but quickly released her and ran towards the farm.

Jyn considered herself an obedient daughter. She did not follow.

The rebels only grumbled. “Follante!” A woman said to the man with the red cape, “The job was to extract Erso, not his daughter.”

“Erso’s deal was that his family comes with him,” he snapped back. His dark gray eyes dropped at Jyn before moving back to the woman, “And until the mission is over, Jettson, I am still your commanding officer, and I expect to be treated as such.”

Follante turned to the other rebels who were standing idly, “We wait here. Provide cover fire if and only if given reason to do so. Once Erso is with us, we make quick work back to the transports. That’s _it_.”

The rebels held their blasters up against the hills, towards the man of white against the scope of green. When a line of black expanded on their field of view, Jyn could hear Jettson whisper under her breath, “Death troopers.”

Jyn crouched against the dirt, watching her father carefully.

The ‘troopers held their blasters out, aiming at something. “They’re going to shoot him,” one of the rebels said.

_They’re going to shoot my mother._

They held out their blasters, and all together crimson bolts flew in each and every possible direction. Jyn’s eyes widened and the world went slow as she watched her mother fall to the dirt. Jyn cried and yelled. “Mama!”

Some of the rebels jumped down the slopes, running towards the soldiers of the Empire. Jyn ducked away from the line of fire and ran, almost tripping over the slopes as bright red bolts displaced loose soil. She reminded herself of the games her father made her play before.

 _Go to the hatch. As fast as you can._ She ran and tripped and stumbled and went. She’d committed the hatch to memory. She turned back to see if anyone followed her. Either the blackened _death troopers_ or the people who shot her mother. She was greeted only with the sound of distant blaster fire.

She wiggled the rock away and climbed down the ladder. With her tiny stretch of a window, she watched what she could see and listened to what she could hear. The sound of guns neared her, and Jyn hoped and prayed to the Force that they would not find her. She saw the brown of the rebels’ boots. They were running, back to where they left their starships.

Jyn’s eyes followed them until the opening prevented her. When they were gone, what followed was the sound of thunder and jarring footsteps. Jyn understood why the Empire called them Stormtroopers. “Find the child!” A rasping voice yelled. “Let the rebels run.”

She made an audible gasp as a pair of black boots stood right in front of her. The sound was masked by the hum of ten engines igniting. Jyn counted to ten, forcing her breaths to slow and deepen. She didn’t stop counting until all the troopers were gone. Once they were, Jyn made her way deeper.

The hatch was tight with barely enough room for her and the jars of supplies, but if she pulled her limbs together she could squeeze herself in. The daylight of Lah’mu streamed in through the little gap, but still it was dark. She waited there until she couldn’t see anything anymore, then she waited until her brain couldn’t decide if her eyes were closed or not.

Then she slept.

When she wakes up, she is most likely still in Jedha. Jyn knows what happens next in her dream. She spends her days looking for her mother’s body, trying to find her father, living alone.

Until Saw Gerrera comes for her. And Jyn is no longer lonely. For a while, that is.

Saw leaves her in a shell turret in Onderon with a knife and a fully loaded blaster. It was a test. Jyn knew it was a test.

She is familiar with loneliness. For almost three years on Lah’mu, she lived with whatever her father left in store (and what the droids could harvest.) The farming droids weren’t good conversationalists, and two weeks later they refused to speak to her. For years she was alone, going back and forth to the shoreline and far into the hills. She ran into a few other immigrants, but most left her be.

Then she found the commlink.

When she was alone in Onderon, a blaster and a promise to return, she began looking for that commlink: a way to lead her to Saw. She wandered planets, hopping in and out of transports, leaving a mess for the Empire wherever she went.

The trail, the destruction she was following to find Saw, ended at Jedha—a blasted warzone. Detonators were everywhere, but even more now that the Partisans made base.

She remembers running out of the line of fire, then a sack being thrown over her head. Her head throbs slightly, where the butt of a blaster was probably introduced.

Jyn is in a cell, stinking of sweat and Jedha’s dirt. If she tries hard enough, she can catch a whiff of the oil from Saw’s favorite rifle.

“Rise and shine, Jynnie. Saw’ll see ya now.”

Jyn turns to see a woman. She is pale, skin almost like chalk, but human. Her speech is slurred and her arm hangs in a limp. Somehow, the woman knows her. Jyn scrambles her memory for this woman’s face. She finds nothing but memories that she has tried to bury.

Staven, who gave her a first sip of fermented bantha milk and lectured her for hours for almost risking their lives.

Maia, whose gloves she kept—and eventually lost after trying to rewire an Imperial detonator. The Partisans don’t speak of the dead. It makes it easier to forget that they were dead.

The chalk-skinned woman cuts Jyn’s bonds with one swift motion.

_No more distractions._

She shuts down a tremor in her body and steels her spine to meet the soldier who saved her from Lah’mu.

“There.” She gestures to a curtained doorway. Jyn steps through the curtain the way she will a spider web. The pallid woman does not follow.

Jyn scans her surroundings. There isn’t much if not a wild living area for a lonely hermit. However, it shows a view of the valley through a window carved into the rock. She turns away. If she stared longer, she might have seen thundering black boots.

She hears a metallic clank, and her hand goes to the blaster in her boot. It has nothing left in it, but still Jyn keeps it with her. The Partisans must have put it back when they realized how little a fight the blaster could make.

“Jyn, is that you?” A hoarse voice asks her.

She doesn’t know what to do. Close her eyes, fall into the darkness of her cave of Lah’mu? Or turn and face the man who freed her from it? She’d never go back to Lah’mu. She promised herself as much.

Jyn shifts her head to face Saw Gerrera.

Or rather, a shadow of Saw Gerrera.

Jyn knows Saw, a soldier, scarred but strong. What she sees is not him. It’s an old man, held together by metal and maybe even sheer willpower. Has it been only five years, or longer?

“I can’t believe it,” he whispers with his raspy voice, “Jyn—“

She pulls out the blaster and holds it out for Saw. “You left this at Onderon.” Her voice is sharp, loud. She isn’t talking about the blaster.

“That’s… I gave that to you.” There is no harshness in his voice. He pauses for a while, takes a breath through some mechanical aid. “Why are you here, Jyn? You can fend for yourself. I wasn’t going to leave you if I didn’t believe you could make it alone.

“I left you behind because you were the daughter of an Imperial science officer. Chances of them using you as a hostage…” He trails off in a series of coughs. “I was hoping you were still in the fight. I hoped that—“

“What?” Jyn interrupts. “I would join the Alliance?” She laughs it out so strong the words are almost spit.

“You were always the greatest soldier I’ve had, not because of your skill but because you _believed_. You knew the enemy like I did. You were ready to die for our cause. Fighting with me, you weren’t safe. With the Alliance, you would be safe. The Alliance would keep you safe.”

“That _Alliance_ took my mother from me, Saw!”

Jyn has always chosen to fight with Saw and his Partisans. She had seen the rebels shoot her mother and do even the darkest of deeds, and still they hold their heads high like saints. Saw and his people know what they do, and they own up to it.

His eyes are alight, as if he’s just woken up. Jyn braces for it, before she realizes that it’s what she’s been waiting for.

It doesn’t come.

“Saw.” A scarlet Twi’lek walks in to the chamber. “It’s _him_. The Imperial pilot, the one who defected.”

Jyn is unfazed. “That was almost three years ago.”

Saw only blinks before turning away in a whisper, “I have to go.”

“Saw!” She chases him with her voice, “Saw, promise me you won’t leave me behind again. Promise me you won’t be taken too.”

When she was at Onderon, it was what she feared most. That when she was in that turret, like she was in the cave, the Empire took him, the closest man she’s ever had to a father in a while.

He turns back to face her. “Jyn.”

Jyn can feel the tears at the back of her eyes start to push their way out. “ _Promise_ me, Saw.”

“I—I promise, my child. I promise.” With that, he leaves with the Twi’lek. Jyn can hear yells from beyond the chamber.

When he’s gone, leaving her once again in a cave, in a turret, in a little chamber with a window to the world, she mutters to herself. “Kriff, I need a drink.”

 **Bodhi, despite being from Jedha, has no kriffing** idea where he is. A cave, most probably. The base of the rebel extremists.

“I defected!” He screams. “I’m not with the Empire. Haven’t been for years! I need to speak to Saw Gerrera! I have a message… from Galen! Galen Erso!”

He continues to stammer, “T-The Alliance doesn’t even know I’m here! They think I’m here on leave!”

Most of them, at least. Cassian, his friend and fellow pilot, he thinks Bodhi’s on a mission. With his Imperial background, the Alliance recruited him to Rebel Intelligence. He’s used the past three years seeking Saw Gerrera, ever since he saw Galen with the message.

“I’ve been looking for Saw Gerrera for years. I-I have a message from Galen Erso. It was in my boot.”

“Do you know what’s in the message?” A raspy voice calls out. Bodhi scans what little he can see for the source of the voice. _It’s him._ Saw Gerrera. A man made of fire and ferocity and steel.

“N-no! I don't,” he pauses for a breath, “It was with Galen, just before I left Eadu. I've never seen the message myself.”

Saw Gerrera whispers to the others beside him. It’s inaudible to Bodhi. He gets one hard look from the Partisan, before a sack is once again placed over his head.

 **Cassian regrets to say it, but the meals** for even Imperial cargo pilots are better than what a Captain gets with the Alliance. Sometimes he envies Galen, for never even once having to try staying at Yavin 4. But there is sympathy for Galen Erso.

The man has lost all he could lose; living unwillingly in the Empire for ten years then finding out his family is dead. Then he volunteered to go undercover for the Alliance. Yet somehow, the galaxy gives him more to lose. Cassian knows how close he and Bodhi were. Bodhi found a friend in Galen just as Cassian has found a kindred spirit.

Kay-Tu’s smooth mechanical voice pierces Cassian’s thoughts. “How do you accept, that for three years Galen Erso withheld information regarding Saw Gerrera?”

“The enemy is the Empire, Kay, not the Partisans.”

“You appear to have forgotten that my origins are from the Empire, as well, Cassian.”

Cassian makes a mental note to recheck Kay-Tu’s programming. Somewhere he made the mistake of low verbal impulse control.

“Well, _I’m_ going to send Galen Erso’s message to the Alliance.” The droid leaves Cassian back to his thoughts.

Galen told Cassian about Saw Gerrera, and Lah’mu, and the daughter Cassian knows he lost.

Kay-Tu reappears again. “Message from Base One, Captain. They want you to go to Jedha.”

He scowls. “That’s parsecs away in the other direction.”

“Apparently, it’s in the Alliance’s best interest that you find Bodhi Rook,” comments Kay-Tu, “Considering the chances of you refusing, I will reset the course for Jedha.” The droid saunters away to the cockpit.

They fly in silence. Cassian repeatedly disassembles and reassembles a blaster rifle to give his hands something to do. Even if he doesn’t look up to check, he’s sure that Kay-Tu’s paranoia has led him to create yet another backup of his drive.

When they land on Jedha, Kay-Tu volunteers to stay behind. “The people here want to put a blaster through my head or dismantle me for parts, Cassian. I would rather I stay and watch the ship.”

Cassian doesn’t argue. He hides a blaster behind his shirt and leaves the shelter of his Imperial cargo ship for the deserts of Jedha. If he is to find Bodhi, he first needs to find Saw Gerrera.

However, he has no idea how to do that. He has some informants in Jedha, most of which practically live in bars and cantinas. Hopefully, one of them has some semblance of information about the extremist leader. Cassian needs a drink anyway.


	2. Hello Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **A Rebel and a Captain walk into a bar...**

**Cassian finds himself within the confines** of the scantily named _The Great Divine_ , a bar off the darker sides of Jedha. There is nothing _divine_ about bars, and nothing great about this one. Even if his informant doesn’t happen to be there, the cheap drinks make for a good consolation.

He strolls up to the bar and asks for a pint of grakkyn. The bartender, a Dagobah-green Twi’lek, nods and serves a glass. He takes a sip, relishing the feeling of the heat dripping down his throat and settling at his stomach.

“You must have done something _pretty_ awful if you need that much of a kick at this hour.”

He turns to see a woman sitting at the bar, just a few seats away. The more Cassian studies her, the more he thinks there is something familiar about her. Her accent is stiff, well-defined and still. There is something to her eyes, hard set and dark, glinting with the green of ink-drawn fire. Her eyes are familiar.

She cocks her head towards the empty seats next to her. Cassian makes a play of sliding his hand around his back, just to check if his blaster is still there. As long as he’s armed, he sees no danger in seating next to strange people.

“Lianna,” she smiles as he sits by her, just a seat away, “Hallik. It’s my name.” She extends a hand, expecting the same respect.

Cassian drags through his mental database, searching for Lianna Hallik. He comes up empty.

With years as a spy, Cassian is acquainted with the process of fake names. He makes a habit of using names of the Alliance’s dead sometimes, to honor their memories. He grasps her hand firmly, callused and scarred. He’s unsure if it’s hers or his own. “Bael Follante.”

She shifts a seat closer, bridging the gap between them. “It’s great to meet you—“ She pauses for a while, as if wondering how to say his name with her accent. Cassian feels a vibroblade press into at his thigh, just over an artery. Her voice is barely whispers as she leans into his ear, “But I don’t think I caught your name.”

“I haven’t done anything,” he whispers to her, “I swear.” First rule of going undercover: when discovered, be ignorant. Sometimes, people had no idea what they were talking about.

Lianna’s reaction isn’t exactly what he expected. She laughs. “If I were with the Empire, _Follante_ , you’d be dead—just like the _real_ Follante. There aren't too many in the galaxy with that name, and I know for a fact that none of them are alive anymore.”

The knife presses more into his thigh. “I take it you’re here for the pilot.”

 _One of Saw’s_. Maybe he doesn’t need his informant to find Saw Gerrera. If he plays his cards right, he can get to Bodhi and out of Jedha before the grakkyn is even flushed out of his system. “You’re one of Saw Gerrera’s extremists.”

The fire in her eyes erupts into an inferno. Cassian can almost feel the knife pierce his skin. “Perhaps not.”

“I will take you to your pilot,” she says it slowly, her accent rolling every syllable, “But  you’ll help me.”

It strikes Cassian. "You don't even _know_ where Saw is."

The presence of the vibroblade suddenly becomes less insistent. “I don’t know where he is _exactly_ , but I’ve been there once. In and out. You don’t even have a chance of finding him without me. You're my ticket in just like I’m yours.”

“Exactly?”

“I’ve been there, seen the entire city right from their windows. They’d be idiots if they showed everyone they brought in exactly how to get there. I asked them to take me back to the Quarter, they shoved a sack over my head and pushed me out.”

She slides her knife back into her boot and leans away to finish her drink. “I’d still like your name though.”

Cassian shakes his leg back awake, just a little bit. “Cassian Andor. Rebel Intelligence.” He looks insistently at her as she downs the rest of the milk.

“I’m still Lianna.” She says as she leaves a credit chip on the counter. “Now, shall we walk?”

He pats his pockets, checking for the chip the Alliance loads his pay in (though he does still have three years of back pay due.) He looks back at the bright yellow chip on the counter and oddly enough: he smiles.

 **When she watched the surface of Jedha** near from the window of a transport, she had two things in her minds. The first was that Saw was down there, and that it looked empty and desolate.

Up close, the streets are flooded with the daily life of Jedha: foot traffic, the shouts of merchants constantly yelling lower prices, chanting of pilgrims and the echo of distant blasters.

To Jyn, they’re sounds of a _home_.

She looks behind her to see Cassian Andor. Jyn wasn’t initially suspicious of him, until he took the name of Follante. Even thirteen years later, Jyn still respects the man, Alliance or not.

“Why should I trust you?” He walks up to her.

Jyn slows so they walk side-by-side, “Trust goes both ways. I need to get back to Saw, you need to get your pilot.”

“You don’t even know where Saw is.”

“But I know he trusts me,” Jyn says this matter-of-factly. “You won’t even get any close without being shot. And you seem desperate.”

“How do I know you won’t run me through with your knife?”

Jyn doesn’t answer. But she knows what she wants to say. _I don’t kill like the Alliance._

They turn a corner, passing into a tightly packed crowd locked within a narrow passage. Jyn brushes against a passerby, then feels a jolt as someone shoves her to the side.

“You better watch yourself,” an Aqualish snarls. Her heart begins racing. She looks at him and smiles coldly.

Cassian grabs her by her arm and sneaks her back into the flow of the crowd, “We don’t want any trouble. Sorry.”

She switches her dark look to him. They continue walking until Cassian breaks the silence when they pass into another street. “So we just keep walking and hope one of Saw’s rebels find us?”

“Hope?” She eyes Cassian doubtfully. “Is that all the Alliance can do?”

He shrugs, “Rebellions are built on hope.”

_And blood._

“Why don’t you go find yourself a contact and I work on getting you through Saw’s front door?”

He scowls,

The crowd thins another street over. Jyn draws up her hood when a crowd of Stormtroopers passes by. She’s tempted to draw the vibroblade, but she doesn’t reach for it. She begins to go around a cluster of merchant stalls, swaying slightly to the constant chant of one of the pilgrims.

Over and over, a simple phrase: “May the Force of others be with you.” His chanting rises in volume until it drowns out everything else.

Suddenly, the chant goes silent. “Would you like to trade your necklace for a glimpse of the future?”

Jyn steps back, looking around.

“Yes, I’m speaking to you.” The voice is touched with a gentle sort of humor. “Your necklace?”

She looks up at the pilgrim. The first thing her eyes land on is his own, milky white and blind. “How did you know I have a necklace?” Jyn can feel the crystal against her collarbone, hidden and buried under several layers of cloth. And the man is _blind_.

“I am Chirrut Îmwe,” the man says as if it explains everything.

“How did you _know_ I was wearing a necklace?” She takes a step closer.

“Lianna,” Cassian reappears. Jyn can see Chirrut smile, as if suppressing a laugh. The rebel’s voice comes sharp and low, “Come on.”

Jyn moves away from the blind pilgrim, taking three strides to Cassian’s side. Her necklace seems to burn warm in the cold. “You seem awfully tense all of a sudden,” she says to him, “Who pressed a knife to your leg this time?”

He scowls at her, “Spotted an old contact. He didn’t have anything better on Saw Gerrera, but he’s been hearing rumors.”

“What _kind_ of rumors?”

They approach the Holy Quarter. The roads have a new being to them. The streets are wider—still as old and ancient, but not touched by the years of expansion and industrialization. The merchants and vendors on the sides are replaced by pilgrims in bright-red robes and hoods.

“There were shootings last night, and word that Saw Gerrera is planning an attack.”

Jyn laughs. Saw is always planning an attack. It’s the way he’s always played. Provoking outrage, hitting quick and getting out fast. He makes it impossible for the Empire to see worth in fighting back. But Jyn remembers what she saw in him that morning. “It could be it’s one of Saw’s people arranging it without Saw.”

“Regardless, we have to hurry. The town is getting ready to explode.”

They pass a mural, though it can’t be called that if it’s deteriorated into one singular shade of brown. Shards of stone litter the ground beneath the mural. Among the scattered bits of stone is a grenade fragment lodged into the base of the wall. “We’re a little late for that,” she laughs bitterly.

 **Cassian isn’t the least bit surprised when** the assault tank rolls in. He scans the rooftops. His gaze flickers back periodically to the civilians along the edge of the plaza. To any other person, it looks like passersby clad in thick, bulky cloaks and overcoats to protect from Jedha’s most recent sandstorm.

Stormtroopers aren’t the most attentive. They’re soldiers, bred to fight—not to think. It’s a wonder they haven’t opened fire yet. “We’ve got to get out of here.” He says the words the way he would a curse.

They begin to run. Lianna pulls Cassian into the cover of a doorway.

Cassian doesn’t see who throws the first grenade. Despite the rumble of vehicles and the thunder of the stormtroopers, he recognizes the sound of a detonator striking the pavement. Lianna watches it with her hard-set eyes, before the metal sphere disappears in an explosion of stone pieces and smoke.

_No one will really miss that mural._

He hears the sound of ten cloaks and overcoats being thrown out together, and the snap of pistols and rifles that he knows so well from Yavin 4’s grounds.

“Looks like we found Saw’s rebels,” Lianna mutters. Her blaster is in her hand, finger on the trigger. He sees only moments of the chaos on the streets. A rebel bleeding on the street, searching for cover; a trio of rebel attackers hiding out on the rooftop of a shop; a stormtrooper shot right in the visor. The guns of the tank take aim, right up to the roof.

Suddenly Lianna is out there on the street.

“Lianna!” He yells. Then he sees. Right by the shop is a little girl paralyzed in fear staring into the battle. Lianna grabs her, scooping her up and running under a rain of sparks and stone. She lets the girl go into the arms of a woman, probably the little girl’s mother.

Lianna is too exposed. Right behind her is another rebel on the rooftop behind her. He takes his blaster out and fires a cluster of shots just above her head. Then she runs again, just as the rooftop blows up behind her.

Lianna sprints for him and the cover of the doorway, before bowling into him and slamming him to the ground. He’s about to shove her off and sit up, when a detonator explodes dangerously close to them.

He drags her to her feet with a breathless, “Come on!” Cassian doesn’t thank her.

They run fifty meters before running into another squad of stormtroopers who are advancing gingerly through the Holy Quarter as if the streets were mined.

Knowing what just happened out there, Cassian won’t be surprised if there was.

Suddenly, Lianna yells his name and takes out two truncheons from her coat. He watches as she slams the two metal roads into the joints of the stormtroopers’ armor. She moves from blow to blow, knocking away until they are at a distance her truncheons can’t reach. She picks up a blaster and aims for them.

Cassian takes his blaster out and joins. Aiming for what she hasn’t taken out on her own. He slams the butt of his pistol into the helmet of a trooper, watching it collapse to the ground—just as Lianna kicks one of the men she’s left on the ground.

They huff together in exhaustion, their breaths not really in sync but equally tired. Then she picks up her blaster and shoots out towards the alley, where an Imperial security droid sparks and falls to the ground revealing a second droid behind it.

She’s about to shoot again, he can tell, before the droid shuffles to a halt. “I’m very glad that wasn’t me.”

Lianna is frozen in confusion, but he recognizes the same whirr in the voice of K-2SO. “I thought you wanted to stay with the ship,” Cassian growls.

“I did,” the droid replies, “But I was bored and you seemed to be in trouble. There are a lot of explosions for a man just getting a drink.” The droid pauses before speaking again. “Cassian, who is this?”

The sound of clustered blasts echoes from the direction of the plaza. Cassian could feel sweat dribble from his forehead despite the windy chill of the afternoon. “We should find one of Saw’s people. Hopefully someone still breathing.”

They’re about to make for the plaza when Kay-Tu turns his head, “The Imperial forces are converging on our present location. I suggest we leave immediately.”

They left.

Cassian watches Lianna as she winces with her every step. While she may have taken down most of the stormtroopers, they were sure to leave some bruises behind. She probably also has a concussion, from the grenade earlier at the plaza. It went off at a stunning force, and she’d shielded him from most of the blow.

She needs a medical droid. Instead, she’s travelling with a man she just met (and threatened) at a bar, an Imperial security droid and several injuries from a still ongoing riot. Considering what she’s just done and how she’s reacted to everything so far, Cassian isn’t sure she’d react well to pity.

Lianna’s arm blocks Cassian from a passageway that is too narrow to even be named an alley; they watch a dozen or so ‘troopers pass through the intersection. Across it, Cassian recognizes a side street just through the intersection. “That would bring us out of the quarter,” he tells Lianna.

She waits for the patrol to move away before promptly sprinting through the crossroads.

“Would you still tell me who that person is?” Kay-Tu looks at Cassian as they follow her.

“Halt! Stop right there!”

Kay makes a sound that’s not unlike a sigh; “Of course you won’t be able to tell me right now.”

All three of them turn around towards the voice. The stormtroopers who had just passed by earlier are now spread around them.

 _Too many to fight._ Cassian thinks as he softens the grip on the blaster at his side. The power pack is almost empty, but there’s no point saving the bolts. He looks to his side to see Lianna, smiling smugly as if she’s eager to be in such a predicament— glad to have nowhere to run.

The squad leader nods at K-2SO. “Where are you taking these prisoners?”

Cassian feels something that borders hope and relief.

The droid stares back at the squad leader, struggling to process some semblance of an answer. “These are prisoners.”

Cassian winces as that feeling evaporates.

He hopes K-2 is in the process of accessing Imperial behavioral programming. Or most likely, and worst of all, K-2SO is _that bad_ at lying. His most natural state is relentless honesty, despite constantly being in the company of Cassian—a man who lied for his life.

“Yes,” the squad leader says. “Where are you _taking_ the prisoners?”

K-2 speaks slowly, “I am taking them to imprison them. In prison.”

Lianna picks up, “I’m not going ba—”

The droid swings a metal arm into Lianna’s face. “Quiet!” Her green eyes widen in shock and unkempt fury. She looks just about ready to fight anyone at that point. “And there’s a fresh one if you mouth off again!”

Cassian isn’t sure what he hears, but he’s half certain that it’s a growl that’s coming out of her throat.

“We’ll take them from here,” the squad leader says.

K-2 starts rambling. “That’s okay. Really. If you could just point me in the right direction, I can take them. I’m sure. I’ve brought them this far—”

The squad leader nods at the other ‘troopers, “Take them away.”

“You can’t take them away!” K-2 protests. Cassian wants to snap. _Don’t argue_.

Then a voice cries out, and everyone—stormtroopers, captives and droids—looks to see. “Let them pass in peace!”

 **Chirrut Îmwe stands in an archway, staring at** the stormtroopers with milky white eyes. Looking at him, Jyn wants to laugh.

The stormtroopers begin repositioning themselves, fanning around the pilgrim. He begins chanting, the passage resonating in Jyn’s ears: “The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.” He steps through the archway, placing himself just between Jyn, Cassian and the insane Imperial droid.

“Hey! You there, stop!” The squad leader yells.

One stormtrooper calls out, “He’s blind.”

“But is he deaf?” The leader replies indignantly. “I said: _stop right there_.”

Chirrut begins to walk closer, and the squad leader directs the blaster and fires a single shot. Time is her enemy. It’s too late to shout a warning, too late to intervene. Jyn feels an ache, guilt for this blind pilgrim who died for a girl he met on the streets of Jedha.

But Chirrut is still not dead. The distance is impossible, the precision definite and still the bolt sails right through the air and just over her shoulder.

The hesitation the stormtroopers had against shooting a blind man was remade into unease and sense of duty. They fumble with their blasters, aiming into dead air. Chirrut is within them in two strides, twisting his staff and sweeping arm and legs into unnatural angles. He leaps to the side as a stormtrooper fires his rifle. The bright red bolt instead finds the shoulder of another trooper, and Chirrut shakes his head disapprovingly.

Hurting and exhausted and cold and aching, Jyn knows that she has to do what she can. She chooses her moment carefully before swinging her elbow into the helmet of the stormtrooper next to her. She hears Cassian and the droid fighting, and continued shouting form Chirrut’s direction.

Jyn slams her shoulder into the stormtrooper’s chest, taking him down into the ground, before rising and kicking him fiercely, viciously and repeatedly until she’s certain he won’t be able to rise.

Before her, Chirrut stands calmly over a pile of bodies. It’s an interesting way to express vanity, she finds. But the fight isn’t over. (In Jedha, it never really is.)

Jyn is all too familiar with the sound of stormtroopers approaching. She sees no form of cover, and no way for Chirrut Îmwe to save them again.

Then she hears the crackle of a particle bolt, but none of the stormtroopers even has their rifle in a readying stance. A stormtrooper collapses to the pavement, and then another as sniper fire strikes them faster than Jyn thinks is even possible. When the last of the squad is down, the shooter emerges from behind them.

His hair is wild and disheveled, and he’s dressed in red armor—Jyn’s unsure if that’s it’s natural color or if the rust has plays into it. In one hand, he holds a large repeating cannon. In the other, an embellished bowcaster trimmed in gold; this, he hands to Chirrut.

“You almost shot me,” Chirrut says to the sniper.

Jyn assumes that he and Chirrut are partners.

“You’re welcome,” he says, before firing the cannon into the back of a crawling stormtrooper.

Chirrut’s partner studies her for a while, which makes Jyn rather uneasy. Cassian’s Imperial droid—it’s a wonder how he got it—strides forward to survey what’s left of the intersection. Chirrut’s partner aims the cannon at him, before Chirrut holds his arm and stops him.

The red-armored man lowers the cannon, though it’s clear he looks disappointed.

 **Cassian looks at K-2. “Go back to the** ship,” he tells the droid. “Wait for my call.” If Kay could roll his eyes, he might have; instead he turns around and walks back to the ship. "Oh, and Kay, find out what you can about Lianna Hallik."

Next to their new allies, she nurses her shoulder. “Thank you,” she says to them.

Her face goes sour, as if she’s just smelled the state of the vegetation on Yavin 4. “Can you get us to Saw Gerrera?”

No one gets a chance to reply before someone yells: “Hands in the air! Weapons on the ground!”

Partisan fighters emerge from alleys and rooftops. Cassian wonders if at least one of them might pop out of the ground.

“We’re not the enemy,” the blind one says, “Can’t you see we’re no friends of the Empire?” He places the bowcaster in the dust. Even the red-armored man takes off his repeater cannon.

A Tognath steps forward, its faced wrapped with a mechanical respirator. “Tell that to the one who killed our men.”

Cassian remembers the rebel on the rooftop, the grenade going off just over Lianna’s head. He pulled the trigger so easily, just as he did every other time.

Lianna steps forward, “Anyone who kills me or my friends will answer to Saw Gerrera.”

A collective murmur passes through the crowd of rebels. Cassian hears one loud chuckle, and another yell a loud _What?_ and Cassian sympathizes.

“And why is that?” The Tognath asks her.

She doesn’t even stop to think. “Because Saw _knows_ me,” she says, “And I know _him_. Because I was battling at his side while you were still crying in you beds instead of fighting back.” Cassian’s faith in her being able to bring him to Bodhi is renewed. “I’ve seen that man at his worst. I know exactly what he does when he feels betrayed, and I’m still _alive_.”

“Because,” Lianna finishes, “I am the daughter of Galen Erso.”

The Tognath watches her for a long moment. Even Cassian doesn’t know how to react. As far as Cassian knows, even Galen believes his daughter to be dead. He, just like everyone else in their little square, is frozen in place.

Cassian doesn’t believe it. He refuses to. For years, he has believed that Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen Erso, was dead. Then he sees it. Her eyes. Galen’s eyes.

“Take them,” The Tognath commands.

Cassian is so still in shock, it only takes one rebel to wrestle him down. A coarse sack is fitted over his head, and he tries to breath through the fabric. Something heavy hits him in the head, and his skull is reeling.

His last thoughts before he goes under is this: _Galen, your daughter is_ alive _._


	3. Enter the Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Real Footage of Actual Shooting Star**

" **Bor Gullet can** _ **feel**_ **your** thoughts," Saw Gerrera says. He is watching. Outside the cave, the cell where Bodhi is. Safe, but watching.

The shadows on the cave seem to be moving; writhing and _alive_. Bodhi tries to bring a tendril of darkness into light, but it seems to get more out of focus the more he tries. He sees nothing but the lanterns that light his peripheral vision.

Saw Gerrera is a ghost. Bodhi's vision blurs. Saw doesn't move his lips, but Bodhi hears his voice, "The Alliance has sent to kill me, and you use Galen Erso's name to do it."

"Don't do this," Bodhi says, barely loud enough to hear, "Please don't." He mumbles, pleads, as if he's once again the Imperial pilot he once was. He is afraid of pain, of course he is; but that thing in the shadows, he finds fear itself staring at him within the dark.

It crawls towards him now, swirling around him. The shadows smell sweet, like poisoned honey. Bodhi wretches within his bonds.

"Bor Gullet will know the truth."

Bodhi feels a feather-light touch at his shoulders, a smooth caress at his neck. He shivers, trembles, and suddenly the gentle touch becomes painful. He tries to scream, he feels like he's screaming, but he doesn't hear a sound.

The tendrils find his forehead. Bodhi closes his eyes, and he erupts in a cold seat. His body becomes cold, but little pricks of heat and fire pin his temples.

He sees his mother in the wisps of dark, she's teaching to handle a knife. She's never let him handle a knife. His teacher and copilot Misurno drunkenly calling Bodhi his best and only friend. Galen Erso, wrapping Bodhi in his embrace and sending him to find the Alliance. Ih his pocket was the holochip Galen told him was for Saw Gerrera.

Bodhi isn't sure what is a memory and what it is the shadows are making for him. He can no longer remember how to breathe. All he knows, sees and feels are the wisps of darkness and the silence of his own screaming.

"The unfortunate side effect," the ghost says within the gloom of Bodhi's mind, "is that one tends to lose one's mind."

 **Ninety-seven percent of the** troops on Jedha were taken out. 97% percent of the troops stationed at Jedha would be safe. It is enough. A 3 percent loss is nothing compared to a victory even the Emperor will take note of.

"I hope it's as ready as you say it is, Director." The voice comes form the turbolift. Krennic turns on his heel and smiled a broad, _respectful_ smile at Wilhuff Tarkin. "I assure you, it is," Krennic says. "But given the event, one would have hoped that the Emperor and Lord Vader might have been here."

"They're awaiting _my_ report, Director," Tarkin retorts as he crosses around, eyeing the bustle of officers and technicians. His voice drips irritation, "And I thought it prudent to save you from any potential embarrassment."

Krennic wonders if it's his own embarrassment, or perhaps Tarkin's. He sees through Tarkin. The man believes that a demonstration on Jedha will ruin Krennic. Or, if Krennic succeeds in annihilating Jedha, Tarkin will try to take credit in the eyes of the Emperor.

If Krennic fails, well, all the better.

But he will not fail. The Death Star is ready. "Your concern is unsolicited," he looks to Tarkin. "The finest scientists and engineers of the Empire dedicated their lives to this project. I assure you, the Death Star is ready."

"If only saying something would make it true," he hears Tarkin mutter.

Krennic turns away. "All Imperial forces," he announces, "have been evacuated, and we stand ready to destroy the entire—"

"Unnecessary," Tarkin interrupts. "We're making a statement, not an entire document."

He doesn't bother to hide the grimace his face makes. "What exactly is it," he asks, "that you suggest?"

Tarkin shrugs. "The Holy City will be enough for the day."

So Krennic's assessment of Tarkin's motives has been incomplete. The old man is banking on both a success and a failure, ensuring that even a perfect performance will be unspectacular at its best.

"Target Jedha City," he snaps, "Prepare single reactor ignition."

This isn't how he'd imagined the finalization of twenty years' work. Not the underestimation, or even just the diminishing, of all he's put into work.

"Fire when ready." His voice is steady and his chin is held high. No matter the outcome, Krennic has earned this pride.

 **Saw looks out his window to see** a Star Destroyer escaping orbit. _They're evacuating._ It makes no sense to him. Since Jyn came to the hideout, nothing's made much sense. He's watched the holomessage, two, three, four times. It makes no sense.

Saw knows why she came back. Jyn's lived too much of her life alone. Saw knows how much she wants not to feel alone, how much she wants to feel safe. It's why he left her in Onderon. He wants her to be safe too.

She's angry. Saw can see it. There is a fire in her eyes, as she stares at him in melancholy. She's angry, but she's also lost. She's lost and looking for home.

"The pilot brought a message, Jyn." Saw looks at her, "A message from your father."

He sees that face of hers, the one he saw in every face in Onderon when Steela died for them all. It's hope, and fear, and uncertainty, all at once. And Jyn's eyebrows scrunch. _Denial_.

Galen's name saved her life, Saw knows. His rebels, the ones he trained and led and fought with, were about to kill her. Galen's name saved her life.

Jyn's eyes don't leave his. "What's in it?"

"I would rather you see it for yourself, my child."

He takes her deeper into the caverns, where mounds of wires lead to a single holoprojector. The chip is still there, from the last time Saw watched it. He pauses to inhale through his aid before starting up the projector.

He hopes that perhaps this time, it might start to make sense to him. "For what it's worth, the pilot believed it to be real."

 **Jyn only watches, as a blue figure stands** right over the projector. Even in blue monochrome, Jyn can see the blazing imprint of the Empire's symbol over the man's chest.

This man can't be her father. This is a man who looks tired, but isn't haggard. It's the image of a man dying in the gentlest of care. No matter how gaunt or sleepless or still Galen Erso has ever been, he has always looked alive.

Jyn kneels to the ground; because this is still her father. This is still Galen Erso, no matter how he's lived or how old he's gotten. "Papa," she says under her breath.

His eyes look beyond the recorder instead of at it. Her mother always told her how she had her father's eyes. Jyn doesn't see her eyes. These eyes that she looks into now, they're empty and shallow; little embers remain of the passion she remembers her father always had.

"Saw."

His voice hasn't changed.

"I would have sent this to the Rebellion, but I haven't the slightest idea how to contact them," the image of Galen Erso says. He pauses, thinking for words. "It has been eight years since Lah'mu. They took her, Lyra's body. She's among the dead in Coruscant." He pauses and looks around at something Jyn can't see. "This isn't why I'm sending this message."

Jyn fights herself again. To look at her father or the cave in Lah'mu. She has never felt more alone.

"I don't know if there are any rumors. What you've heard might be true. They're building a planet killer, Saw. It's happening. I let it happen. They're going to turn it onto rebelling planets. I should've stopped it. I think it's cowardice that prevented me, or the knowledge that Orson will still be able to build it without me.

"We call it the Death Star. There is no better name. Wherever you are, Saw, keep running. Go one place and go another. And if Jyn is with you…"

He trails off, or maybe Jyn just shuts down. She hasn't heard her name from her father's lips in years. It's enough to overwhelm her.

"If Jyn is with you," he picks up again, "Let her know that now a day has gone by without my thinking of her, and of Lyra. That my love for her has never faded. That I only try to think of her, and her mother, _our_ family, when I'm strong. It's just so hard not to think of them. I want her to know… that—

"I think, logically, rationally, that you are with the rebellion. If you are with Saw, it's the only direction I think he'll steer you in. It makes me proud to think that you will fight when I cannot. That you are somewhere working to oppose the injustice in the galaxy. But if you are with the rebellion, you too should run. Once the station is built, our name will not save us now."

_My father's name is not what saved me. It's these people. I am one of them. They saved me._

"But Jyn, even if you're not with the rebellion, and still this message finds you, I am no less proud and no less happy. If you're somewhere in the galaxy, untouched by war, maybe with a new family to call you theirs, then it's more than enough."

There is an intelligible sound from behind. A gruff yell Jyn can't make out. Suddenly, life is back in Galen Erso's eyes. "There can't be a way to stop it, it's improbable while it's in construction and impossible when it's done. Saw, Jyn, _run_."

With that, the message dies.

Jyn looks at Saw. For once, there is really nothing left in her. Not even embers. She tries to say something to Saw, anything.

"That's the fifth time I've watched it," he tells her. "The message is years old. If your father is anything to go by, then… you should run."

She notices how he fails to say _we_. It's as if he doesn't plan to join her. As if he's given up…

"You're not going to run?"

"My child," he looks at her, "I ran to keep you safe, and still you found me. This weapon of the Empire, your father's Death Star, it will find me just as you did. My running now won't keep you safe, Jyn. Save the rebellion. Save the dream."

Suddenly the cavern rumbles. They turn towards the light and hope not to see a shadow in the sky.

 **They're handled like animals. The rebels** tear his hood off with such roughness, Cassian's sure his head will come out. He blinks furiously to adjust his eyes to the dark lighting. He turns around in time to watch the shadow of a cell door close on him.

"It appears Jyn Erso is not with us," the familiar voice of the blind pilgrim says from somewhere behind him. Cassian turns around to see him, sitting on the dirt legs crossed. His partner hovers over him…

No. He has a name. Chirrut, he remembers Lianna said. A Guardian of the Whills, a dangerous combatant, a blind man. She called Chirrut's name while they treaded sand slowly. "Chirrut?" Lianna had said. "Cassian?"

Cassian heard no other reply but Chirrut's repetitive chanting, muffled by the hood. ( _The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force…_ ) Perhaps that was all she really wanted to know, that the people who were in the mess with her were still alive.

The cold was unrelenting. He assumed it was early into the night. Beside him, Cassian recognized the heavy tread of Chirrut's partner. He risked a whisper. "We're almost half a day out. A shrine?"

A deep voice answered him. "The Catacombs of Cadera. A monastery."

The name meant nothing to Cassian.

Names. _Names._

Lianna isn't her name.

Her name is Jyn Erso.

Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra Erso. Born on Vallt, raised on Coruscant and Lokori. Died 3264 LY on Lah'mu.

This is the story that Galen knows and tells, that the Alliance knows and tells. That Jyn Erso is dead.

But she isn't dead. It's exactly what Chirrut just said. She's somewhere else, alive and not in a cell and alive—

How did Chirrut know her name?

"Are you a Jedi?"

Chirrut's partner laughs. It's a strange sound, ugly and loud. "No Jedi left anymore. Just dreamers like this one."

"He's bothered," Chirrut says, "Because he was a dreamer once. A believer, too." He shrugs, "Baze Malbus was once the most dedicated Guardian of us all."

 _Baze Malbus_. Cassian registers the name into his mind, filing it into his mental database—seeing as so far the name brought up nothing.

Cassian runs his hand over his face, scratching at his beard. He's in the Partisan base. Now there is only the matter of finding Bodhi. He goes over to the lock. It's mechanical, but wired into the systems of their rebel hideout. He can reach it definitely, most likely pick it, but not without setting off some alarm. He's about to try— before he's interrupted by Chirrut's chanting.

"After all this, you pray?" Baze asks his partner.

Without looking, Cassian is sure that the blind man is smiling. "You pray. The captain is praying for that door to open."

They bicker like an old married couple. In a fight, they're formidable; and Chirrut, Jedi or not, zealot or sincere, there is something to is preternatural awareness.

He turns to look at the still-chanting Chirrut, "Why did you save us?"

"Maybe I only saved her." Chirrut pauses his chant and only shrugs. Cassian grunts at his response.

"Relax, Captain," he replies, "We've been in worse cages."

"No." He says this as if it should have been obvious. "This is a first for me."

"There are different cages beyond what we see, Captain."

At this, Baze laughs. There is nothing boisterous to it. It's only a rough and hollow sound.

Cassian frowns and turns back to the lock and the problem at hand. It takes him some minutes before he realizes that no one ever told Chirrut he is a captain.

Just as Cassian's sure he's about to start some sort of fire, the gate swings open. He feels ready to celebrate, before he sees another prisoner kicked into the cell. And just like that, it's closed again. The guards return to their game of dejarik.

"Who is it?" Chirrut says.

The man doesn't turn to face any of them.

Chirrut's voice is less than a whisper. "What's wrong with him?"

Cassian takes their new cellmate by the shoulders. Then he realizes that he knows the face.

"Bodhi." His voice comes out as a breath. "Bodhi, it's me. Cassian."

Bodhi's eyes roll up, so Cassian can only see the whites of his eyes. It's as if he's trying to look into his own mind. He mutters deliriously. "Cassian. I brought the message. I brought it." He shrinks back.

_He's broken._

"Cassian Andor," he tries, "It's Cassian Andor. You know that name?"

Bodhi's eyes close and he hisses, as his breath picks up, swift and loud like a dog losing its life. Cassian holds him still. _Come on…_

Bodhi opens his eyes again and his breathing slows.

"I brought the message," he says again. "Galen's message. I brought it. I'm sorry I lied."

His eyes lock straight into Cassian's. "I'm sorry."

Cassian tries asking about the message, but Bodhi has since then refused to look at him. He mumbles an apology every now and then, but little else.

This has to be worth it. That message, that Bodhi has gone so far to send, it has to be worth its cost.

He turns back to the lock, probing the edges of the tamper alarm. He takes out the picks in his boot, finding which will be best for the situation.

Cassian holds the picks to the lock. It's a basic barrier lock, if not for the alarm in it. He begins to fidget with it, playing care with the wired alarm.

Then the catacombs begin to rumbles, and his arms are thrown forward. The picks shift exactly where Cassian doesn't want them to be. The next thing he does is press himself to the ground.

It's too late when he discovers it isn't an alarm. It's a trigger. A line of wired mines must be ringing the cell door. When he turns back up, Baze's hair is on fire. The man is quick to put it out.

The explosion seems to have rung Bodhi from his stupor.

"At least's it's open," Baze wipes sweat from his brow and ushers Chirrut to stand. He smiles at Cassian, and he finds himself returning that smile.

Bodhi is alert, turning his head everywhere with his eyes wide. Cassian hauls him up and has Bodhi lean on him. They turn for the nonexistent cell door.

Jyn Erso is standing there, surprise lining her eyes. They all stand there, staring at each other.

"Let's go!" Baze snaps. She makes for the table where their gear has been stashed, tossing Cassian his blaster and his comlink. He fumbles with it for a while, and signals, "Kay-Tu? Kay-Tu!"

He hopes the droid is at the ship. He hopes that the droid hasn't followed them again.

They begin running. It's Jyn Erso they're following. She seems to know where they're going, how to get out. They run out of the catacombs, up the ancient steps worn down to smooth stone.

"There you are." The comlink crackles with static, to the point where Cassian can't comprehend the voice. "I'm standing by as you ordered. Though there is a problem on the horizon."

"What problem?" Cassian spits. Once they make it out, his eyes have to adjust to the light. That can't be. It was night when they were brought in. He staggers to a stop behind Baze and Chirrut, standing on a broad mountain ledge overlooking the valley.

"There is no horizon. On a more positive note, I believe this is what Galen Erso has been doing."

Jyn points up to the sky. "What's that?"

His mouth goes dry. It's not until his vision comes back to normal that he understands what the droid is talking about.

There is no sun in the sky, only a glowing gray eclipse. He knows what it is by looking at it.

"That's the planet killer," he tells her, before facing her directly, "Your father made it."

Her bloodshot eyes meet Cassian's. "The Death Star," she agrees bitterly. Cassian doesn't know where she heard the name.

When Galen told him they were building a planet killer, he thought a weapon to kill everyone on the planet. He didn't think a weapon that could kill _an actual planet_. A chill worked its way down his back.

"Locate our position," he yells into the comlink, "Bring that ship here _now_!"

"Five minutes," the droid replies, as if he's someone being awoken from a nap and not one responsible for their survival today.

Cassian glances at Baze, and Chirrut, and Bodhi, then finally at Jyn Erso. _Five minutes_. It isn't fast enough, and still it's too fast.

"What do you see?" Chirrut asks Baze.

They all look out.

"What do you _see_?" Chirrut asks again.

A storm of dust. Then nothing. Emptiness. The land where the Holy City had been.

Bodhi mumbles against Cassian's shoulder. "This wasn't supposed to happen yet."

Beyond his whispers is another noise: a resounding clap separate from the rumble of the storm and the dust making way for them.

It's his ship. The painted-on Imperial symbol is dusted and scraping off the sides. It dips around the mountain, trying to match the ledge.

Baze and Chirrut start toward the ship. "Okay, let's go!"

They run for the boarding ramp, the window within the storm. "I'm sorry," Bodhi mutters to Cassian. It's as if he's given up. Cassian doesn't allow it. He pulls Bodhi tighter to him as he feels the younger man's knees give way.

"You need to run," he presses him palm between Bodhi's shoulder, some sort of push.

They do.

 **Jyn is still quaking.** She still hears Saw bellow within her ears, against the storm. The first tremor, Jyn realizes, was from the blast at the cells. His last words to her are suddenly screams.

"Save the Rebellion, my daughter! Save the dream!"

His dream or hers? His dream or hers?

The final jump is ahead. She leaps, but still the window is above. She doesn't reach. The darkness of the cave swallows her up. She isn't falling, only becoming nothing.

A hand catches her, yanking her violently forward an instant before the door of the ship shuts. Is it Cassian? She wonders if it is.

"Get us out of here!" A voice yells. Its accent thick. The Alliance Captain. "Punch it!"

She takes a seat and clutches to it. She observes the cabin blankly, hoping to find something that will tear away the blue image of Galen Erso, or the silver ghost of Saw Gerrera. Her eyes are bloodshot and her state no more than catatonic. She hates herself for this weakness.

Jyn feels hard eyes watching her. It's the new one. The pilot, probably. He stares at her with wild eyes.

"You're Galen's daughter," he mutters. "Galen Erso."

Galen. Her father. She's an orphan again, like the three years on Lah'mu. Her father is alive, always has been. They know him. Perhaps she has never been orphaned at all.

Only alone.

The ship lurches forward, and the pilot leaves her for the cockpit. The ride is choppy, but Jyn recognizes the moment they go for lightspeed. Which is very soon, too soon for a normal flight.

Jyn feels a hand grasp hers, a consoling figure. It's Chirrut's.

"I am sorry, about Saw Gerrera," he says. "I know he meant a lot to you."

Jyn nods, smiling sadly. "I'm sorry, about Jedha."

"Baze, tell me." Chirrut says and faces his partner. "All of it? The whole city?"

 _Baze_. Chirrut's partner has a name. He sits beside the blind man. The bright lines of hyperspace splash on his darkening face as he says, "All of it."

 _All of it. Jedha city is gone._ The death of Jedha City is the death of Saw. His last words echo in her ears. _Save the Rebellion! Save the dream!_

His dream or hers? His dream or hers?

Cassian Andor joins them in the back after a while. He sits down in front of her. They don't look at each other, or anything else but the lights of the dead and empty space between the stars.

"So," she begins by looking at him, but he doesn't face her. "You knew my father."

There is silence for a while.

Cassian presses his palms together, then sits up straighter. His brown eyes burrow into hers, sneaking into her mind, breaking her down into whatever little pieces remain of her since seeing her father again.

"You have his eyes."

And deep down, Jyn can't help but smile.


	4. The Long Way Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **The Star Trek**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I know I said next week and everything, but this draft was staring out at me and made me realize I wrote two chapters in two days and that I should go edit it. Aggresively un-betaed, like aLL THE OTHER CHAPTE RS_

**Bodhi feels a strange sense** of comfort. He's on a ship. He _knows_ ships. It's a U-Wing, UT-60D model; familiar to him in ways he tries to comprehend. He recognizes the thrum of the engine all around him, an Incom Corporation rebuild of the Imperial standard 9XR. He knows ships. He knows _this ship_.

He sees himself in the pilot's seat, gliding through hyperspace. He sees himself on the passenger's chair; holding on tight and watching Jedha disappear into dust and cinders.

Which is real?

Bodhi understands the difference between past and present, reality and recollection. All he can't do is define which is which. It's as if strips and ribbons of his memory were taken out in spools and shoved back in rolls.

He knows that Bor Gullet isn't there in his mind anymore. He is gone, just like Jedha City. His mind starts reeling. His eyes blink rapidly, and his brain understands only the dust storm approaching, his arm slung around Cassian's shoulders.

 _It isn't real_. Is it real? Is it just a memory: that shadow in the sky?

The planet killer…

Planet killer. Galen. Imperial pilot.

Bodhi gave up his life to keep the Empire's ambition a dream. "I'm sorry," he closes his eyes. "I failed you. It's all my fault. I'm sorry."

No one hears him or bothers to forgive.

There are people here. People he doesn't know. _He's_ somewhere he doesn't know. It's all in his head. The shadows are weaving this into his vision.

 _No_. _This is Cassian's ship. You're safe in Cassian's ship, with the Alliance._

He opens his eyes. Bodhi doesn't know these people. But he knows where he is, and that's a start.

Bodhi watches them warily, before his eyes land on one particular passenger.

Galen is among them. Galen isn't there, and still he is. His eyes are watching Bodhi, blankly but looking at him nonetheless.

Bodhi raises his head to meet Galen's eyes.

It's a girl, a few years younger than him at most.

It's Galen, staring at him with every question of the universe in his eyes.

 _Jyn Erso_ , his mind says to him. Someone called her Jyn Erso. Her name is Jyn Erso.

How does he know that?

"You're Galen's daughter," he whispers to her, as if it's a secret they're keeping between each other. "Galen Erso."

Bodhi sees Galen's final embrace. It's his name that brings these memories.

It's his name that forces the girl to turn away. Her eyes avoid him, looking out the viewport or anything but him.

It's disappointment. Galen's disappointment. It's on Bodhi to stop the planet killer. But he couldn't. He can't.

Jedha is ashes because of him. All he knows is running.

Bodhi drags himself away to the cockpit. He sees a droid and a man in the seats of the cockpit. Kay-Tu and Cassian.

They're adjusting thrust madly, trying to ride the sea of dust and turn through mountains falling to make a maze.

Bodhi doesn't interrupt. He watches their hands splay over the controls, playing with the buttons and switches like they're only in a simulation flight and not their flying for their lives.

Bodhi sees a shadow creep over the cockpit as a mountain decides to fall.

He's going to die. Or maybe he's already dying in the arms of Bor Gullet, and his mind is making this for him.

Bodhi can't die. Not yet, when he hasn't done what he was allowed to do.

"I'm sorry," he yells against the roar of the ship.

Maybe it's meant for Cassian, but he doesn't hear it. Bodhi lied to him. There was never a mission; there was never a leave. There was only Bodhi doing what he knew he could. For Galen, who allowed him to.

"I lied to you." To Cassian. His friend.

He doesn't turn to face Bodhi. Maybe he doesn't even hear. Instead, Cassian snarls. "Come on!"

Then the sky cools from the pallor orange into blue, then black, before it shines and fills the viewport with white noise. The U-Wing leaps into hyperspace as Bodhi whispers one more time, more to himself than anyone else, "I'm sorry."

 **There is no other light on the overbridge but** blinking dots of the controls and the glowing lowlight in front of them.

The screen is filled with an image of Jedha, what remains of the valley of the Holy City. The moon is ravaged by a constantly churning storm of sand, dust, ash and fire. The air of Jedha flashes with purpling crackles of lightning.

It's only a scar on the face of the moon.

This isn't the fate Krennic imagines for Jedha. His Death Star was made to _destroy_ worlds, not wound them. But perhaps Jedha will never recover from such ruin. There is only Jedha's burning crust and its broken atmosphere left, revealing the pulsing core.

Perhaps it doesn't only destroy. The Death Star reveals.

"It's beautiful," Krennic murmurs, his face aglow with the new light of Jedha.

"I believe I owe you an apology, Director Krennic," Tarkin says against the silence of the Death Star's bridge. "Your work has exceeded all expectations."

"Of course it has," he replies, "But it can exceed more. What you've witnessed today is only an _inkling_ of the Death Star's destructive potential. Surely you'll tell the Emperor as much?" _You sound too eager_. He moderates his tone. "This is, after all, _his_ victory more than any other man's."

Tarkin swipes his hand through the air. "The Emperor prefers facts to flattery. I will tell him the way he knows it. That his patience with you has been rewarded with a weapon that will bring a swift end to the Rebellion."

"You're too kind," _condescending bastard_ , "Governor. With this much power in his arse—"

The old man makes the same gesture as before: a demand for both silence and attention. Krennic smiles poisonously with obligation.

"I will tell the Emperor," Tarkin says, "that I will be taking control of the weapon I first spoke of years ago… effective immediately."

_Taking control of—_

Krennic curls his gloved fingers into fists as he tries to rein in his anger and quell it. He steps as close as one possibly can to Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, and snaps. "We are standing here, amidst _my_ achievement—not yours!" He lowers his voice into a hiss. "The people operating the station now are _my people_. They are loyal to me; and it is only _my people_ who are capable of operating this station."

Of all the thoughtless acts to pursue, it is this that is most of all: threatening Tarkin openly. But Krennic has never been a man to live his life smiling meekly forever.

Tarkin narrows his eyes at him, inching his own face closer to Krennic. "Loyal?" He steps away with a laugh. "Do you remember the pilot that defected? The one from years ago?"

"What concern do I have," he answers in a faceless retort, "For a pilot who lost his mind three years ago?"

The cargo pilots for the DS-1 project were know-nothings to the genius happening under them. They were replaceable; a ransom fee for them need not be met like it had for Galen.

"And the stormtroopers you've liberated from Jedha," Tarkin smiles, "they all agree that the pilot was there, along with Saw Gerrera and his merry band of rebels."

"Then there's nothing left of them but dust."

There is a flaw in that idea, Krennic understands. There is a chance that someone might have escaped the havoc. A chance that is highly improbable, but not impossible.

Tarkin most likely smiles, but all Krennic sees is a sneer. "You think that pilot acted alone? Had it not been for my foresight of your incompetence, Director, we would not have looked into the issue and realized that the pilot was sent from the installation on Eadu. Galen Erso's facility."

Krennic feels his fury attempt to overcome, but it has made a fool of him once already. This time, he can't hide any surprise. "Impossible," he mutters as he starts marching towards the turbolift. "How come I was not notified of this years ago?"

As the silver doors of the elevator close, Krennic can see Tarkin watch him smugly.

 _ **The Death Star.**_ **Cassian remembers** her say.

Galen's planet killer, too, has a name. And power, a dangerous amount of it.

The sudden shot of adrenaline and shock seems to have done the work of his liver, and there is nothing left to the warmth growing in the back of his head.

There is nothing left to Jedha City, and if they stay, nothing of them. Perhaps Galen knows, perhaps he doesn't. The Alliance should.

Cassian turns around to see Bodhi. He's the other problem of the equation. Saw and his Partisans have done something to Bodhi, something Cassian can't understand. His mission was to find and rescue Bodhi, but it seems there are other dangers for the former Imperial.

But Cassian needs to send a message first.

"Bodhi," he says at first. "Would you mind—"

"Cassian, I need to tell you something!" It's barely a sentence. More of a string of words said speedily. His eyes are in focus, compared to earlier on Jedha.

Cassian knits his eyebrows together. "What is it?"

"I—" Bodhi looks to be thinking on his next words, as if it's a poison he wants to retch from his system. "There was never a mission. I was never on leave either.

He pauses in thought as Cassian thinks. Bodhi lied to him. It's what he meant back on Jedha. He lied to Cassian, and the Alliance. But beyond everything, even if Cassian hadn't meant to, Bodhi became a friend.

"Galen had a message, back when I was on Eadu, I think. I took the message. I did it for Galen. He couldn't send the message, so I did. Those three years with the Alliance, I spent my time looking for Saw Gerrera. I lied about that, too. I don't regret it either."

Cassian forces himself to remain faceless. "Did you know what was in the message?"

Bodhi shakes his head with as much force as the shockwave on the surface of the moon. "N-no. I think so. I've had that message for three years. I've never looked at it."

Kay-Tu appears to be listening into their conversation.

"She's Galen's daughter, isn't she?" Bodhi asks.

Cassian nods, hoping the some stretches of Bodhi's mind remained from whatever Saw Gerrera had inflicted on him.

"Galen Erso's daughter," Kay-Tu sneaks in to the conversation, but doesn't turn his head away. "That would explain the lack of a few records." The droid turns to face them. "Would you like to know the chances of anyone you meet in a bar being a dead person, much more the dead offspring of a person you know?"

"Not really," Bodhi answers. Kay-Tu doesn't mean it, of course. The droid is only making a point.

"Also, Bodhi Rook," Kay-Tu says in his monotonous voice. "You owe the Alliance a new ship."

Cassian breaks a smile into his face as he escapes the cockpit to send a message to the Alliance.

He heads to the comm unit. _Erso's weapon deployed. Jedha City destroyed. Bodhi Rook extracted. Please advise._

Cassian can imagine General Draven's reply.

Draven has never actually been fond of Galen Erso. The man has never said anything to Cassian, but the way he speaks bares his distaste more than it does his soul. Cassian was younger when it happened, but the vote to extract Galen Erso a second time did not come from General Draven.

The comm unit beeps brightly at him, with only a single word repeated in Private Weems' voice. "Return."

He nods. "Understood." Cassian turns away from the unit and yells to the cockpit, "Bodhi! I know you're on the chair. Set the course of Yavin 4!"

He makes for the passenger seats of the U-Wing transport. Chirrut is grasping Baze's hand tightly and chanting. Baze looks like a man seeking something else to watch.

Jyn Erso is only staring into hyperspace. The little lights spark her face and make her eyes look even wider.

Cassian sits right in front of her, closing his eyes and forcing calm.

"So," she says to him. "You knew my father." Her eyes are watching him. Cassian adjusts his seating, so he can properly stare her down.

To Cassian, Jyn Erso is a story. A little eight-year-old girl shared to him by Galen Erso. What he knows of her is that she is stuck in life as a little girl, who names her toys and likes cookies and waits for her father at the door of their home every afternoon.

In front of him is Jyn Erso. She is no more than five years younger than him in the least, but her eyes are those worn by men far more aged than he. They're the eyes that have seen it all and decided to go back to what they have. They're her eyes and Galen's. The shape, color and emotion are theirs.

"You have his eyes," he tells her.

She smiles at him. It's a sad sort of smile. The smile he makes when he remembers Fest before the Empire. The smile Galen makes when Kay says a joke.

"He thought you were dead, you know," he adds and watches her smile fade into nothing. "We all did. One of the survivors of the Lah'mu mission wrote about it." She isn't moving, but her eyes follow his words into the air.

Her face of nothing devolves into a grimace. "Add that to the list of things the Rebellion's done for me."

"You don't care about this? Any of it?"

Her eyes harden and the set of her chin tells Cassian he struck a nerve like a string of a guitar. "This _rebellion_ of yours? Your _Alliance_? It's brought me nothing but pain."

Cassian sharpens his words. "Prepare to jump into empty space then, because we're going to the base at Yavin 4."

"I'm not going to the Alliance," she says with conclusion. Her face has chilled into something worthy of the frosts of Hoth.

"Yet you fight with Saw Gerrera and his Partisans."

Jyn Erso angers again. "I wasn't there for the fight. I can't care less about who runs the galaxy." _Then why was she fighting?_

"Not all of us have the luxury of deciding when we want to care about something, Jyn Erso." Cassian can feel Chirrut and Baze stare at him. He realizes it's the first time he's actually used her name…

He remembers asking Kay-Tu to research on Lianna Hallik, one of her names. Perhaps to hear of the things she's done, he'll learn something of her. Something that isn't shaded by the stories of Galen's memories. So that Jyn Erso will become a person, not a story.

He begins to walk away. Her voice chases him and runs down his spine. "I want to see my father!"

Cassian shifts his head over his shoulder, facing her but not quite looking. "The orders were to get Bodhi back to Yavin 4." He goes back to the cockpit.

 **Cassian Andor had the audacity to** yell at her about the Alliance, and about Saw. Jyn knows why she's in the fight. She fights for the camaraderie between the rebels more than she does the cause.

_Save the dream._

That's all the Alliance knows. Jyn wonders what to expect when she lands on Yavin 4, where the Alliance Base of Operations is. After Cassian retreats to the cockpit, the pilot comes out. He looks like a mess, almost as pathetic as she is.

She is disheveled and broken and lost. Deep down, he must be going through worse.

Jyn tries to remember the newspaper holodocs she took from her time as Tanith Ponta. _Bodhi Rook_ , they said to her in glowing blue words. He's dressed in a stained black flight suit and wearing battered goggles over his long hair.

Bodhi takes the seat Cassian had just vacated, weaving and unweaving his fingers together. He looks like he hadn't slept in days. Like he expects everything around him—the cabin, the seats, and the bulkhead—to suddenly become sentient and swallow him up.

"How do you know my father?" Jyn asks him.

"Eadu," he says, "I think it's Eadu. I met him there. I think so, yes."

"You brought the message to Saw," she adds. "Did my father tell you anything else?"

He whispers to himself on the seat, not really looking up. At some point, his whispering gets louder. "Galen—he said—" Bodhi ducks his head. "He said I could get right by myself. He said I could _make_ it right, if I was brave enough to listen to what was in my heart and do something about it." His lips work over and over again, forming sense out of sentences before swallowing them whole.

His mouth makes a silent laugh. "I guess it's too late."

Jyn has a hundred more questions, none of which she wants the answer to. Bodhi doesn't look like he wants to answer either.

The silence of the cabin and the darkness of the cave, Jyn listens to her father's voice. _It's happening. I let it happen. I should've stopped it_.

Jedha City is gone. Saw is gone. His people are gone. The little girl is gone.

Saw's last whisper howls and rounds into an echo. _Save the dream_.

Galen and Saw tear at her together, asking for something she can't give, something she can't lose. Jyn is hollow and bare, and what is left of her is still in the cave of Lah'mu. She can't give something she needs.

_Save the dream._

The dream is an endless day on the backwater planet of Lah'mu. It's the Imperial ships descending on the farm, and Follante reminding her to be quiet. It's the smell of blaster oil against the grass poking out from the hill and silent thud of her mother hitting the ground.

Jyn closes her eyes. It's her choice, to look back at it. It's all she can still keep for herself. She's back in the cave. It glows blue with the ghost of Galen Erso and the silver shadow of Saw Gerrera.

Saw did not raise her. He taught her what she knew, what she tried to forget when she was alone. She surprised herself in the streets of Jedha, how much her muscles retain the fire Saw set in her. She hates him for that fire.

But Saw isn't the only presence in the cavern.

It is a Galen Erso she doesn't know. Not the brilliant man she was told of, who was sought by the Empire for his research. Not the gentle farmer she remembers, who was taken from her and has always loved her from between the stars.

There is another Galen Erso. All Jyn knows of him is a flicker of sapphire light in a dark cave that lives within her eyes. Words echo against the walls and repeat over and over and over. Words about love and happiness and loneliness. Warnings and excuses and plans and lies.

 _My love for her has never faded_.

She doesn't try to stop the words. Each one tears at her, and she holds on to them as much as she can. They tell her to run but she doesn't.

_Save the dream._

She opens her eyes because she can't do it. Jyn opens her eyes but Jyn is still in the cave. There is music to Chirrut's chanting and Bodhi's whispering, and it echoes against the dimming walls of rock and darkness. She doesn't reach for them, for the light of the sky above her.

She wants to climb out; oh, she does. But this cave is all she still has. Bodhi's whispering joins the chorus of her mind. The sound floods her ears as she tries to hear it over the dark of the cave.

_My running will not save you now._

It will not save her either.

Maybe it isn't too late.

"Eadu?" Her voice is cloudy to her. "Is that where my father is?"

Jyn can see Bodhi's eyes from the window of the hatch. "Eadu's where he said his message came from. So is your father there? I think so, yes."

Galen and Saw yell into her mind, demanding something she can't allow them to take. All she has is the darkness of the cave and the voices of the people that were taken from her, silent and loud; demanding and gentle; angry and pleading.

No matter what it was she told Cassian earlier, all she has left is hope.

Yet she breaks anyway. She gives into the demands and the shame that bears down her neck. But she can't do it alone. Jyn can't be alone.

"You're a pilot, right?"

Behind them, Baze grunts unamusedly.


	5. Sweetheart of the Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Celebrating the Life of Jyn Erso**

**Jyn didn't know what to expect** when they landed. (Or _if_ ; she wasn't going to put it against the people who flew the transport.) She did hope for an apology, maybe? Not like a majestic detonation somewhere in the atmosphere with _WE'RE SORRY_ glowing over her head. Even recognition for what they've done to her would have sufficed.

 _After everything Saw has taught you, you've gone_ soft.

She stopped trying to expect halfway through the ride. Then she rifled through Captain Andor's bag. He packed light and impersonal. No holoimage of a doting wife or family, or a ragged version of a childhood security blanket. She counted a total of three knives, a BlasTech A-180 blaster pistol and a heavy fur coat. In a pocket of the duffel were about four or five holochips labeled similarly: _K-2SO backups_.

She assumed that was the name of the droid.

Jyn listened silently to Chirrut pray, and asked him about kyber crystals. All she got was a vague answer in turn.

"What do you know of kyber crystals?"

Her hand went to her mother's necklace. "My father said they powered the Jedi's lightsabers." One weapon to another.

"They say the strongest stars have hearts of kyber." Her father specializes in kyber. The Death Star, in all its strength, would definitely have a heart of kyber. One weapon to another.

She talked with Bodhi as much as she could before he spaced out between sentences and barely made an effort to listen to her. He seemed like a good man, if he hadn't gotten mixed up with the wrong sort of her people…

Just like her father had.

She tries to imagine some sort of reunion with her father, tries to picture meeting the man in the hologram for the first time. Will she cry? (She might. Her self-control has been going down lately.) What will she do if she sees him there; in Imperial robes and his hair cut cleanly like the hologram?

Hope that somehow he recognizes her? Tell him who she was between sobs of happiness and fear and uncertainty?

But _who she was_ was Kestrel Dawn and Tanith Ponta and Lianna Hallik: a fighter, a criminal and a survivor. And before that, she was Jyn, and only Jyn. Because she did not need her father's name to save her. She had her own family among the Partisans.

Not the Alliance.

Never the Alliance.

They look at her as she walks the ground of Yavin's moon. They whisper among themselves. The words _Captain Andor_ and _recruit_ are in the air. Jyn scowls at the thought.

Bodhi walks out of the hangar first, giving her a prompt nod before disappearing. He seems to look better than earlier. Unlike Jyn.

She's coated by a thin film of sweat minutes upon breathing the air. She really wishes she didn't breath it in. The humid breeze carries the scent of mildew and rotting vegetation, though it seems to try and mask the small hint of sulfur Jyn identifies.

A great stone ziggurat stands as a shadow on the surface of the jungle moon. _Yavin 4_.

Perhaps the star system is too obscure for her to recognize. In another life, she studied navigation. Was it Kestrel's time? Or Tanith's petty life? Jyn doesn't bother trying to recall.

Jyn looks to her back where Cassian Andor walks behind her. He has since donned a mask. She identifies it as the mask worn by spies she's taken notice of in bars and cantinas around the galaxy. His chin is held high and his shoulders are carefully set back. She later realizes he isn't wearing such a mask. He's always _been_ a mask.

"Keep walking," he says as he marches Jyn down the tarmac and onto the slick stone floor of the pyramid. They walk together, his Imperial droid trailing behind them. They pass pilots in jumpsuits chatting up technicians; starfighters and freighters and transports sitting in orderly rows.

_Why is she still here?_

It's not as if they'd let her run. She's here already.

_Jyn, you should run._

She wonders what to do. Trip Cassian, smash his face on the pavement and use him as a human shield? No, the droid would be against her straight away.

No, she'd have to wait; hope from the darkness of her cave that Bodhi will follow through. That his loyalty to her father outweighs his loyalty to the Alliance.

Hope. Whatever she said to Cassian before. It's her who hopes. It's the Alliance that kills. What a kind universe they could be in if it were the other way around.

Minutes after Bodhi stopped talking to her, Cassian came out of the cockpit to tell her that the Alliance knew about her now. Without another word, he went back in. She bit her cheek until she drew blood.

The ziggurat is old, crumbling. It appears to be the source of the sulfurous aroma. Wires are strung across ancient carving. Flashing consoles are placed against altars as offerings for the gods who had long since abandoned the temple.

Jyn recalls her mother and her love for history. She holds Jyn close and tells her the tales of the great Jedi. She is quick to banish the memory. The kyber crystal sits colder against her neck. At the mention of kyber crystals, her mind shows her Chirrut, who sits in the ship with Baze. Then she thinks Jedha, and the Death Star, and her father and. It. Doesn't. _Stop_.

"Your heart rate is increasing rapidly," K-2SO whirrs behind her.

She takes a few breaths to try and slow it. Jyn clenches her jaw and snaps back without having to look back at him. "You better hope yours keeps ticking, droid."

"Sweetheart of the Alliance, this one," it comments, "Where do you find them, Cassian?"

Cassian breaks his mask for a while to laugh, "They're all at cantinas, Kay-Tu."

They continue walking into chamber deep below the surface—a bunker, maybe—fortified to withstand an attack if the temple above crumbles. "After you," he smiles smugly at her.

It's a part of his mask.

There is never a better moment for Jyn Erso to hate Cassian Andor other than this. She wants to take him by the neck, push his against the wall and show him a reason to wipe the smile of his lips.

She had the same thought back on the ship, when he was yelling at her about _caring_ and _the fight_. Instead, she just returns his smile coldly. "Thank you."

The bunker is dimly lit and divided by a conference table. Jyn surveys the faces placed in front of her. One is a man wearing the insignia of a rebel general, a scowl rivaling Captain Andor's and hair like rust.

The other is a woman dressed in white robes. Her face is lined and copper hair styled impeccably—unlike the general's at all. She has both the air of authority and that of a person who just walked in.

"Captain Andor," the general nods, "A moment." They retreat to a corner of the bunker, Kay-Tu trailing behind them.

When they're in the shadows, and it appears Jyn and the woman are alone, Jyn hisses. "What is this?"

"My name is Mon Mothma," the woman says. "I sit on the council of Alliance High Command and—"

 _Mothma_. The Alliance chief of state. This is where it happened. Where the orders were given as people far away died—people far away were killed. Jyn's made it her life's work to make as much trouble for both the Alliance and the Empire, but still she'd prefer not to get killed. There's a chance for a safer plan. Maybe.

"I want to see my father," she interjects.

Mothma doesn't even think on it. "No."

That chance for a safer plan dissipates. The hatch in her minds shatters like baked clay.

"I _need_ to see my father," she rephrases. Her plans with Bodhi will surely piss the Alliance off, but right now she's on a short cut track getting angry at its chief of state.

"Miss Erso," she says kindly, but the tone is unforgiving, "Given the circumstances—"

"You told him I was dead!" Jyn suppresses a yell into a harsh, cold voice, "I _deserve_ to see him." She slams her palm against the table.

Still Mon Mothma remains calm in her ghostly white robes. No vulnerabilities for Jyn to jab at. "I understand that you feel somewhat _entitled_ , but we're sorry. It can't happen."

"I feel _entitled?_ " Jyn scoffs, "It's the least you can do after aiming a blaster at my mother!"

She feels glad that the room is empty, that Cassian, the droid and the rust-haired general have left them to this debate, because Jyn cannot help but yell. Her voice feels like breaking at the end of the sentence.

Mon Mothma remains silent for a while. Then her eyes soften greatly. "I'm sorry you feel that way about us."

Jyn has no words. There it is: the apology that she had wanted when she first landed on this rotting moon. Then the general returns with Cassian, a datapad in his hand, and Jyn is angry again. There is Saw's silver ghost within her cave, striking at a flint to choke her in the smoke of her own darkness.

"Miss Erso," he says.

She flinches at the name. The general smiles at his petty victory over her response. "Please take a seat."

 **In Kay-Tu's foresight, the droid had** already downloaded the data on Lianna Hallik on a datapad before claiming that he needed to backup his own drive and promptly left.

Cassian scrolls through the information, scanning little words as the text goes too fast for him to fully grasp. She has three sets of files, none of which have attached birth certificates.

A single diploma to the Future Minds project. An exile agreement, but Cassian doesn't look over the details.

An account on Betha II with a significant amount of credits, which makes no sense as to why she had to steal his credit chip. Just to spite him, most likely.

The datapad refuses to continue as he reaches a letter. Then he gives it to General Draven.

"Erso?" The general asks him. "Not _Galen_ Erso."

Cassian nods. "His daughter."

Draven raises his eyebrows then continues to read. "Where do you find these people, Andor?" The general smiles at him as he reads the documents.

Kay had asked the same question.

Draven holds it now, reading over Jyn Erso.

"Jyn Erso, aliases Lianna Hallik, Kestrel Dawn and Tanith Ponta," Draven smiles, "Apparently, after knowing just _one_ of your names, you're not that hard to find."

Even Cassian was surprised at how much Kay-Tu got on a single name. Maybe she wasn't even hiding to begin with.

"So which one are you now?" Mom Mothma asks. _Lianna._

Jyn smiles. "Does it matter?"

"No," the ex-Senator replies, "Not really."

Cassian never actually read the whole thing, so hearing general Draven, Jyn Erso yet again becomes a story.

"Not much to your early life," he swipes through the datapad.

"Of course not," Cassian hears Jyn mutter under her breath with a smile. He feels his lips tug a little at the comment.

Draven doesn't appear to have heard. "Five years ago, Kestrel Dawn started work as a guard in a mining facility off Kessel. Three weeks later, the facility blew up. I'm guessing that one was you. Dawn was one of the casualties. But we all know she isn't dead."

Jyn shrugs, "Never lived to begin with."

"You were also Tanith Ponta for three years," he continues, "A student in the Future Minds project. Top marks. Taken into Imperial labor camp for piracy, fraud, impersonation of Imperial officers, arson, and interestingly, seduction. Currently exiled on _Lianna_ for assaulting the warden."

"Don't forget," she jokes, "I play a great seven-string hallikset."

Cassian supposes that's where she got the name.

"No criminal records on Hallik," he hears Draven state, "One of four survivors of the fire in an Imperial training camp in Betha II. Refused statement in news coverage. Has been working as a Huttese translator for the past two years."

He's surprised to hear that she can understand—perhaps even speak—Huttese. A curious part of Cassian has always wanted to know what holding a Hutt would feel like.

"Petitioned for temporary leave, according to your records, for a religious pilgrimage in Jedha."

Mon Mothma steps in, "And here we are."

Jyn raises her eyebrow and scans all three of them. Her eyes linger on Cassian for just a little while, before she erupts in laughter. "Are you trying to _recruit_ me? I'm very sure I expressed my sentiments to you, Senator. If you would just drop me off, perhaps in the Meram Sector, I can find my father myself."

"We can't let you go now," Cassian says, "You know where the Base is."

Jyn tilts her head to the side, "Yes, well. As much as I hate the Alliance, I hate the Empire more. I won't be saying anything."

"It isn't the _saying anything_ we're worried about," Draven says as he places the datapad on the table. A monochrome image of Jyn's face is on it, captioned with 'LIANNA HALLIK, a survivor of the fire on the Betha II Imperial training facility.'

She holds a scarf over her face in the photo, but Cassian can see her eyes.

Jyn stands up and leans against the table. "Torture? They'd have to find me first. Then they'd have to figure out who I am."

"Miss Erso," the ex-Senator's voice rises. "Captain, would you please escort her outside?" There're strong notes of exasperation within her voice.

Jyn looks at him pointedly. She's being purposely irritating to punish him for taking her to the base. Cassian knows it. He sighs.

"Reckless, unpredictable," the general reviews out of their earshot, but Cassian is a spy. He's trained to listen against distance. "She's done great work putting down little facets of the Empire, but I really don't see how this is worth it."

Cassian joined the Alliance to build something new. So far, all he's done for it is exactly as Tanith Ponta's criminal record claims. The Alliance destroys. Jyn Erso destroys.

She isn't worth it. That's the truth. Her vendetta against the Alliance is too big for her to start working with them.

Then why did Cassian bring her to Yavin 4? There is only one answer to that.

 **Chirrut feels the darkness emanating** from beyond the walls of the ship, until a bright light shies into his senses.

He smiles and pauses his praying. "Kind of you to join us again, Jyn Erso."

Baze grunts. It's his constant reminder to Chirrut that he's still there. Chirrut find the gesture unnecessary. It's not as if Baze can't just leave.

"She isn't here," his gruff voice calls.

And the shining light comes into perfect view, the crystal at her heart pulsing against the shadows outside. "Who isn't here?"

Chirrut smiles knowingly at Baze.

"Has Bodhi been in here?"

The pilot. An utterly glowing mess of cloudiness and uncertainty. Something happened to the young man, something he did not deserve. "Not really," Chirrut replies.

The light flickers and pulsates. "Thank you."

Baze makes another indignant sounds once the light becomes darker. Either Jyn Erso has stuck to a decision of killing them all, or that she retreated closer to the shadows of the moon. "Why are we here, Chirrut?"

"Because we have nowhere else to go," he answers matter-of-factly. "Tell me Baze, what did you see of Jedha?"

The glow shades red, before fading away. "I mean, why are here with the Rebellion?"

Chirrut feels the anger from Baze. "I do not know your reasons, but _I_ am here with Jyn Erso. Not the Rebellion."

"We are not lackeys of the Rebellion, maybe, but the Empire must pay. They destroyed our _home_. We need to go to the Empire, not wait in this stench of dying plants."

"Alright," Chirrut comment, "Then what are you following?"

Baze pauses. The first answer Chirrut expects, ashamedly, is that he's following him. "Why do you follow Jyn Erso?"

Chirrut sighs. They both know the answer to Chirrut's question that it need not be answered. Baze's, however, should be. He's dragged Baze into worse events, and not once did the man ever demand an answer from Chirrut. But grief and anger grip Baze's soul today. Now is not the time for a Guardian of the Whills to evade questions.

Baze knows that, of course. So many years together, how can he not?

Chirrut places a hand on Baze's shoulder. "Because she _shines_."

"What is it you see?"

"Why must you be both literal and offensive?" He smiles playfully at Baze, "The Force is strong in this dark place, and it is because of her."

For a few minutes, there is serenity in the silence and chatter outside their walls. Then a roar erupts outside.

Chirrut reaches for his lightbow as the heavy clunk beside him tells him that Baze has just slung his cannon.

A ship runs down the tarmac as Chirrut and Baze escape cabin. The bright shine of kyber runs with it. The wind billows against his robes and the hum of the engine resounds in the air.

There is the sound of metal scratching metal, and the glow escapes into space. Jyn Erso and Bodhi rook have just escaped atmo.

Baze grunts, and this time Chirrut appreciates it. "She shines all right."

" **Erso is unhelpful, Senator** ," he says to the ghostly woman.

Instead of an immediate reply, she only smiles. "Which one, General?"

"You know who I mean," Draven answers. Weeks upon weeks of messages from Galen Erso, stating the progress of the planet killer's destruction and yet… "We know about the planet killer, the idea of him rebuilding the stability of its reactor module. What we need are the _plans_."

"Which is why we need Jyn Erso to help us."

Everything on Jyn Erso's three files betrays the point of the Alliance. The fourth they have yet to find.

Draven knots his hands together, "Why would we want her help? She's good in a fight, maybe. She can blow a hole through a moving target's head or snap a neck no problem, but as far as I'm concerned, she doesn't want to fight."

At that Cassian Andor returns to their conversation. He visibly agrees with Draven. He is a fine agent, smart and thorough. His mission was to liberate Bodhi Rook, who was on leave and had not been heard from in days. Rook was important to the plot. The Empire knew about him and he knew about the Alliance. Draven expected the mission to finish successfully and finely.

Not exactly for Andor to return to Yavin 4 with the formerly dead daughter of Galen Erso in tow.

"She'll fight for her father," Mothma answers.

Suddenly, a soldier enters the conference room. She's one of Draven's, dressed in civilian clothes fresh from a rebel cell in Coruscant.

"Officer Moran," he clears his throat, diminishing the argument he had building in him. "What is it?"

Her breath hitches, as if she just ran all the way from the hangar to the bunker. "It's Erso, General. The girl." She takes a deep breath. "She just took of into hyperspace. Ran into their ship as we were landing."

Draven studies his companions. A hint of a smile plays on Mon Mothma's face, but it dies a millisecond upon meeting his eyes.

Andor, on the other hand, listens with a keen curiosity. "Who's flying her?" The captain asks the officer.

"Rook, Captain. They took one of the V-Wing Transports," Moran replies breathlessly, "Elohim and I tried activating the tracker, but I'm afraid it's been tampered with."

Of course it is.

"Doesn't matter." Draven looks to Captain Andor. "We know where she's going." Mon Mothma meets his eyes and gives a brief nod from across the table.

"Captain," Mothma says. "We understand that you've just returned to Base One, but you must go to Eadu." She turns to face the girl hovering at the entrance. "Thank you, Officer Moran."

Moran nods and leaves with Andor in tow.

When the two soldiers are gone, Draven speaks. "She's more trouble than she's worth, Mothma."

"Then you don't understand what she's worth, General," Mothma replies. Somehow, there is no poison in her voice.

"The girl's a thief and a liar," Draven argues.

Mon Mothma adds to his statement, "—who has remade herself three times, fighting the Empire from each front." As an ally, an enemy and a victim. It goes unsaid, but he hears it anyway.

"She's also been fighting the Alliance," he continues, "Practically bit Andor's head off when he used Follante's name." Follante; who led the extraction of Galen Erso and did not come back alive. Draven is sure Mothma knows the name. She authorizes the mission. She knows who died in it.

The Erso's are one and the same: more trouble than they're worth. "You really see something in her?"

"Fire," Mothma answers, as if it explains anything.

Draven can't end the conversation here, where he is on lower ground. He opens it for another chance. "Sure. Anything else you'd like to discuss?"

"Make sure Andor lets her see her father."

He pauses, before looking at her. Mothma's tone makes it so that it isn't up for discussion. "And why is that?"

"I imagine it's time we start trying to make up for our mistakes," she shrugs.

Draven has no retort for that, so her nods brusquely and heads for the comm center. He has enough work keeping the Alliance together. Making amends for its mistakes isn't his job.


	6. May Death Never Stop You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **The Ship Manifesto**

**K-2SO had run all the logical possible** **outcomes of** this single situation. He should have expected the Erso girl to sway Bodhi Rook to her cause due to his current mental state. (Even out of it, she would have swayed him anyway. The pilot happens to have a large appreciation for the girl's father.)

Cassian found K-2SO in their room. A new holodisc drive on Cassian's bed contains K-2's most recent memories. (The captain chalks it up to the droid's paranoia, and he might not be wrong, but K-2SO would rather not kill Cassian Andor in case of systemic shutdown and reboot.)

The captain debriefs K-2 on the their new assignment. (With several warnings in between for Kay to not make any comments.)

"This decision is strategically unsound," K-2SO says as they walk across the stone floor of the ziggurat. And it definitely isn't, whether his own standards or anyone else's. They're only two people, with a direct relation to Operation Fracture. (Important in their own right, but analytically not worth this effort.)

Cassian smiles. It's a strange occurrence, to which K-2 has concluded as a small chance. "Tell that to Mothma and Draven, will you?" (His rebel superiors are not fond of him. It is the tragedy of his existence that his skills are theirs to disdain.)

"Affirmative," the droid replies, "Which is why I'm telling you." (Not that he won't rather be on this mission. Considering the present circumstances, with such a challenge as the Erso girl, his talents of manhandling, capturing, restraining and extracting are virtually required.)

"Let's just go, Kay-Tu," the captain tells.

Cassian's U-Wing is still in the hangar, thankfully. He scans the hull for any dents and scratches that didn't appear to be a scar from Jedha. Knowing Jyn Erso's criminal profile, he won't put it against her to sabotage them. (Perhaps, for once, Cassian will allow him the execution of underutilized procedures hardcoded into his system.)

The two monks are standing by the boarding ramp. The blind one, Chirrut Îmwe, is showing a smile against his partner's scowl. (The spectrum of human emotion is a strange, strange object.)

"Are you joining us?" Cassian asks them. This is where K-2's computations erupt slightly. (Decision also strategically unsound.)

_Chance to retrieve Jyn Erso and Bodhi Rook successfully: 73.4%_

They do not react visibly. "Of course we will," Chirrut replies. (They appear to be honest.)

_Chance to retrieve Jyn Erso and Bodhi Rook successfully: 69.8%_

"Let's go."

They all enter the ship; the two monks make for the passenger seats as Cassian ruffles through his duffel. K-2 stands by. "Where's my blaster?" He says with exasperation as he ravages the bag. (The missing blaster means nothing equipment-wise. It's Cassian that K-2 is worried about.)

_Chance of mission success: 62.6%_

The corner of Baze Malbus' lips tugs slightly into what is most likely a smile. _Probability that Jyn Erso took the blaster: 82.9%_

"It is most evident that your blaster pistol is currently in the possession of Jyn Erso." (K-2SO begins to admire her level of pettiness and aspire for it.)

The smile the captain has worn fades into a scowl.

_Overall Report: In personal study, it would be most logical to decline the mission. Cassian is showing uncommon strings of sensitivity that are most likely to interfere with task at hand._

"Would you like to know the chances of her using it against you when we come face to face?" (It's high. Very high.)

"I really don't want to know, Kay," he snorts. Frankly, Kay too prefers ignorance.

He whirrs his internal hardware as the captain stares at him oddly. "Is there something wrong with your exhaust port?"

"I'm _sighing_ ," the droid corrects.

 **The Death Star aims on Lah'mu, the cave rumbling** within her. There's a storm below them. According to Bodhi, there always is. It would be night, even when the chrono says it's day.

They're being forced to rely on the scanners once they make it through another layer of the atmosphere.

Up, they see nothing more than slate-gray clouds and flashes of light. It's almost peaceful. But the moment the V-wing cuts through the clouds, water starts to drum the viewport as winds batter the hull.

Jyn makes a mental note to inform Draven that impromptu co-piloting is now one of her talents. Of course, Bodhi seems capable enough to fly the ship on his own. "We need to go lower," he tells her as they angle downward at a strange slope. "They might have landing trackers or patrol squadrons here."

" _Might_?" She yells back as a crack of lightning splits the sky in front of them.

"I haven't been here in three years." The ship lurches against the wind. "And I've never really went this way."

A spire falls away beneath them, and they descend deeper into the canyon. The rocks are too close, coming closer too fast, but if they reduce speed any more they'll be at the total mercy of the storm.

There are floodlights in the viewport: a landing pad for Imperial spacecrafts. They're not on an Imperial spacecraft.

Bodhi has no time to release the landing gear when they strike the planet's surface. The V-wing careens forward on momentum only, screeching violently against stone and mud and large rocks.

The ship turns, and Jyn is thrown out. Her body hits right at the entrance of the cockpit and begins the ache. She closes her eyes and feels the hull shred under her.

And then the ship finally stops, cockpit cracked and hull thrown out altogether; a string of hope for the ship ever flying again is nil. She sees nothing but darkness under her eyes. The cave is gone, if not for the sound of thunder.

No. Not thunder. Stormtroopers. They're too close to the facility.

Jyn opens her eyes and tries to sit up, but the pain at her chest stops her from getting to far. Her hand drifts away to check on her ribs. They ache where pressure is placed, and there is a distinct seam on one. She's broken a few of her ribs.

The cockpit looks to be ripped out of the ship halfway, and Jyn's head rests right where the hull broke apart. The cockpit is half buried in gravel and Eadu's wet dirt, as if still deciding if it wants to die or not.

The sound of thunder approaches. "Bodhi!" She yells with her suddenly hoarse voice. Her voice is gone. Only an echo of her father's: "Run!"

"Bodhi!" She repeats the name over and over again, each getting softer and more painful as her chest heaves. Everything hurts. _You're not soft._ It's Saw, a memory of his voice.

The pilot runs to her side. There's a wound on his forehead. Most likely from the broken viewport, but otherwise, he's better than she is. Bodhi kneels over her, but the footsteps come closer to them.

"Run!" It's a chorus of her voice and her father's and Saw's.

His hands shake over her, looking at her like she's delicate and he's afraid to touch her. "I'm sorry," he whispers as he runs his eyes over her. She might be bleeding somewhere, but it's hard to distinguish the blood with the rain as they both drip on her.

"Just go, Bodhi!" Jyn hisses at him. The echo under her head gets stronger. Then another flash of lightning that lights up his face, and he nods and runs. She'd never tell him, but she was hoping this would happen.

Jyn moves her hand to her waist. Cassian's blaster is there at her side, and she reaches for it. The blaster is unfamiliar in her hands, but a weapon is a weapon. Jyn holds it over her head as the stormtroopers march closer to the ruins of their ship.

 **Cassian feels like he's well-practiced flying** in Eadu. It's constantly dark, but he knows the way. They would have had to fly low in the canyon to avoid notice, but his U-Wing is registered thanks to Galen Erso.

"Cassian," Kay-Tu adds into his inner commentary.

His eyes don't leave the viewport, because registered on not, there is a storm. "Kay?"

"Would you like to know the chances that they've already crashed in this weather?"

They would have had to fly low to avoid the patrols. And there are low spires and rock forms. And Bodhi still seems a bit loopy. "Please don't."

"Well, it's very high."

From within the purple lights of the storm and the great whites of the facility beyond them, there is a slight shade of orange. A string of smoke is attaching to the sky. Dry fires would have died in the rain. It's a oil-fed flame. "Karabast!"

"I am highly positive that that's them," Kay-Tu says. It's closer to a confirmation of Cassian's fears than it is a side comment.

"You know how the landing works," he tells the droid. Kay-Tu releases the landing gear as he stands up to go to the two monks in the back. Cassian walks in on a strange conversation of theirs.

Chirrut looks to Baze to ask a question, "I've heard a lot about Jyn Erso's eyes. What are they like?"

"Wide. A well-practiced glare," Baze says and Cassian only agrees. "A shade of green you don't see on Jedha."

 _No._ Cassian disagrees. _Not just green. There's gold, blue and anger and_ need _._ Not that he actually replies. He won't grant anyone the glory of his responses.

"I don't see on Jedha to begin with, Baze," Chirrut chides.

Cassian slams on the bulkhead gently to tell them he's there. "We're going in for a landing. Can't promise it'll be nice, but it'll be better than theirs."

"What happened?" Baze and Chirrut ask this in unison.

"Well, Kay is dropping us off just by their wreckage," Cassian nods, "When we're down, we all check the grounds and the wreckage. Look for Jyn and Bodhi."

At that, the ship shakes and bounces as the landing gear makes contact with the surface. "Alright, let's go," he presses the button by the boarding ramp.

Chirrut holds down Cassian's shoulder, "She isn't down there, captain."

The monk has recently shown oddly extrasensory perception of things, despite being blind. "How do you know?"

Baze laughs again in his hollow comedy. "Never ask Chirrut that question. He never answers."

"Jyn Erso has certain atmosphere about her," he then explains. ("I stand corrected," Baze mutters.) "It isn't here. It's there." He points out the boarding ramp, towards the line of distant floodlights.

 _And Bodhi?_ Cassian wants to ask. But where Jyn is, so is Bodhi most likely.

"I suggest we look anyway," Chirrut sombers. "Baze and I will take the grounds around the wreckage."

Baze looks like he wanted to argue but didn't think it was a good idea.

 **The rain is everywhere** , **pattering on the broken remains** of the V-Wing. The weather becomes to a cold, cruel drizzle as his gaze travels to the ship. Obviously, the ship is torn in two. A rock gashed into the bulkhead and shred the hull away from the cockpit.

The port engine was halfway underground and most likely pestered with rocks and beyond repair. The comms, both long and short-range look to be intact, but without the ship as a primary energy source, they won't be working anytime soon. The starboard engine is sparking dangerously, and probably already on fire.

Bodhi owes the Alliance two ships now.

A thunderclap runs down the ground, but instead of lightning is a constant flood of white on the ground. It's not thunder. It's an Imperial storm.

Bodhi was supposed to take Jyn to her father. She asked him as much. How many people is he supposed to fail?

A voice shouts, "Go check for survivors!" It must be the squad leader. Bodhi runs just as Jyn told him to, and crouches behind a rock. There are sounds of a scuffle under the rumble of the weather and a loud yell that is most likely Jyn.

Then, just below the lightning in the sky, Bodhi hears the sound of a blaster, and a loud _thud_. He closes his eyes and thinks. He's failed Jyn, and he's failed Galen. When he opens his eyes again, the troopers are carrying Jyn out of the ship. The rain distorts his vision, but she's unconscious.

And as much as he doesn't want to admit it, she could be dead.

Bodhi doesn't move away from the raining shelter of the rock he hides behind. This is all a lie. Bor Gullet made this for his broken memories. It can't be real. How can he have failed so many people?

He almost yells when a hand takes him by the shoulder.

"Bodhi, it's me." It's a voice he knows.

He's back on Jedha, in the cave. Cassian is shaking him at his shoulders. "It's me, Cassian."

"Cassian," Bodhi mutters. "I'm sorry."

The man shakes him again. "Yeah. You lied to me. I know."

Bodhi opens his eyes. This is real. Bor Gullet did not make this for him. Cassian is standing there under the rain, K-2SO holding an umbrella behind him. The view makes Bodhi laugh.

"What happened?"

He sits up properly and wipes his face. "I—uh… We crashed."

"We have deduced as much, Bodhi Rook," the droid with the umbrella snarks.

He shakes his head. "Jyn was thrown back in the impact. There was… she looked like bantha fodder. Then the stormtroopers came.

"She told me to run," he shivers as the rain drips chills down his back. "I did. Not as far as I could. Just here. I…" Bodhi doesn't stop stammering. "I heard a blaster shot, then the stormtroopers were carrying Jyn out of the wreckage."

_Was she dead?_

The message goes unsaid. Bodhi doesn't know the answer. "We'll get her later," Cassian pulls him up, "Right now, we need to dry you up."

 **Tomorrow and tomorrow and** tomorrow creeps in this petty pace of Eadu's day to day. It makes its near constant state of darkness almost worse.

Galen has two more weeks before Cassian returns. The Death Star is practically done, and so is its reactor module. By Cassian's next visit, the Alliance would have the plans.

"Make way!" A squad leader yells at the engineers in the passageway.

To say they're carrying this person is an understatement. She's practically being dragged. Young, around Jyn's age if Jyn had lived. She looks to have just been roused from unconsciousness. There is blood on her side.

" _Watch it_ , target practice," she shakes against her restraints. Then their eyes meet and she stops. Galen watches her for a brief moment, studies her. Her mouth moves inaudibly.

Something flashes briefly in her eyes, before she's handled again by the stormtroopers. She doesn't argue with them after that.

Galen approaches one of the stormtroopers who remained at the entrance of the facility. He gives a salute. "Officer Erso!" Galen gestures for the trooper to drop his hand.

"Who is that girl?"

Perhaps, if Galen can see under the visor, the man would have shown him a look of confusion. "The prisoner, sir?"

He nods.

"They found her in a wreckage off the canyon, Officer. No identification; and the ship was beyond recognition. We don't really know _who_ she is."

Galen nods at the information. While it's uncommon for people to crash unknown into Eadu, it isn't the first time it's happened. "Where are you taking her?"

"Interrogation, sir." Interrogation does not mean coercion of information. Not on Eadu.

He thanks the trooper and heads for the detention block in the eastern wing of the building. It's rarely used. Galen hears something short of yelling from beyond the doors.

"I'm not telling you _anything_ , snowman!" The young woman declares, "Because I don't _know_ anything."

Galen pushes the door open, and they're silenced. Once again, the girl's eyes watch him softly. The bloodstain at her side appears to still grow. Her chest heaves in the chair. She was limping a while ago.

"Get her to a bacta tank," he tells the guards, "She was injured in the crash, and she needs to recuperate. Not dealing with your questions. I will question her later."

They look at him oddly, but Galen only looks at them. He is the commanding officer of the facility. They'd have to listen to him.

"Yessir," one of the troopers replies. The girl doesn't stop looking at him while they usher her away.

 **She is in the tank for the** next few hours, until morning. Of course, it doesn't look like morning, if not for the kind drizzle on the window by the side of the medbay. The weather gets worse by hour.

The view is somber, overlooking the canyons where this girl's ship crashed. The wreckage is still there. Galen shifts his gaze to the girl lying on the bed. There is a note on the side of the bed. _Unknown patient. Concussion. Three broken ribs. Ankle sprain. Overnight bacta submersion._

Among the things on the bedside table are a few things. A blaster pistol relieved of its pack. A credit chip. One thing catches his eye.

It's a simple necklace with a stone pendant. Galen knows a kyber crystal when he sees it. He picks it up gingerly with both hands. "That was my mother's," her voice says, kinder than when he'd first heard her talk.

"Where did she get it?" Galen remembers Jyn, and Lyra. He gave Lyra a necklace like this. It's familiar to him. He chafes at the pendant; and he becomes familiar with the precise cut of the stone. It could be Lyra's. It can't be Lyra's.

The girl's eyes watch him from the bed. "My father gave it to her." Her eyes become sad. "She gave it to me." She forces herself to sit up.

"Who are you?"

Her face tightens.

"What's your name?" Not once, even in his time as a spy, has Galen ever learned that yelling works. It makes him feel worse, if anything.

She looks to try and say something, but her voice breaks. "Papa, it's me." Her hand reaches for the pendant in his hands. Galen can't pull away. "It's me. It's Jyn."

Galen closes his eyes and shakes his head. He tries to pull away from her hands, but her grip is unrelenting. "My daughter is dead," he denies. He denies it over and over again.

"Papa," she cries, "You know my name. _Jyn_. Your _daughter_."

He repeats it again, softer, kinder, "My daughter is dead."

"Papa, it's me. It's Jyn." She's sitting on the edge of the bed. " _Stardust_."

Galen's eyes whip to her face. No one knows what that name means to him. The danger the name can impose on the Alliance. "Stardust," he repeats in a silent cry. He's forgotten emotion entirely, that the name sounds empty and hollow. Galen places Lyra's necklace— _Lyra's_ necklace—back on the bedside table.

And suddenly the girl earns a face. Lyra's face, and his smile and his eyes, and his daughter's _everything_. She earns a name. Jyn Erso, his stardust, his daughter.

Galen pulls close the image in his mind, of a nine-year-old girl with eyes of ink-drawn fire. He looks at this young woman in front of him, and she stares back at him with those flaming green eyes. Except, the green sear is no longer there, instead in embers and doused with tears.

He doesn't move. He lets the haggard young girl trap him in her embrace. An embrace he finds warm, loving, and familiar. Galen finds tears decorating the rim of his eyelids. "Papa."

He remembers a nine-year-old girl, who would smile and hold him tight in her hugs. Her loud voice—a voice that anyone would have had to listen to because that is the way it has always been—is replaced by something kinder. A tone that her mother used when the crackling leaves of Lah'mu attacked her window.

His hands hold both sides of her face. "My stardust, I thought you were dead."

The same green eyes. Staring. Crying.

"Papa," she says again. Her voice sounds like that of a child waking up in the middle of the night and asking for her parents. And he is there, holding her tightly in front of a gloom view in an Imperial Research Center.

She's light. A crumpled leaf of a girl. But warm, breathing, and _alive_.

Galen lets go of her for a moment. "I thought you were dead." There is reverence in his voice, as if this girl in his arms is the most important thing in the galaxy.

As it were, she is. Jyn Erso is his daughter, his stardust. By far, she is certainly the most important thing to him.

He looked straight at the green eyes that look so much like his own. "Not a day went by without me thinking of you."

"I know," she mutters, "Papa, I know." There's raw emotion in her voice, the constant passion, anger and sense of righteousness Lyra has always had. Galen remembers a nine-year-old girl who he left in the hands of the Rebel Alliance almost thirteen years ago. A little girl who he thought was dead.

The medical droids take her in, and she tells them who she is. They've prepared a test, because it's a story they don't trust. He looks out at the soft sunrise in the mountains, the light refracting and creating millions of rainbows against the soft drizzle. Galen closes his eyes, wanting to freeze the moment forever.

From this point, and the next two weeks until Cassian Andor returns, Galen Erso's life will be a mix of happy and sad. His daughter is back; his daughter is alive. Alive in the middle of a galactic civil war.

"Officer Erso," an engineer enters the room. "Director Krennic here to see you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know these sort of things ruin the moods of chapters, so I avoid them as much as possible. This chapter just didn't want to stop. I got the whole story down in 2K words, and I embellished the dialogue with actions and descriptions and once we got to Galen it just kept flowing. Anyway, I hope you liked it! _Kudos & Comment!_


	7. The Pawns We Don't Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Saw Gerrera's Final Shadow**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao what is plot advancement

**Bodhi huddles himself in the cramped engine** compartment of Cassian's battered U-wing. The mechanisms' heat is always one to warm him. He's relatively warmed, no danger of hypothermia, but still in him seeps the bitter chill.

The kind hum of the engine lulls Bodhi's soul to rest for the night.

"Bodhi!" Someone beyond the little compartment yells for him. He scrambles out; stumbling when he realizes his legs have fallen asleep along with him.

He squints at the bright light of the cabin and the rising sun of Eadu's dawn, missing the dark and warmth of the shuttle's thrumming heart. "W-what?" He finds K-2SO in the cockpit, his index finger pointed out the viewport.

"An Imperial transport," the droid's gaze follows the said ship along the sky, straight from the horizon to the facility.

Bodhi's eyes widen as his mind goes on overdrive. "Bad-bad-bad-bad-bad." He says this a few more times until K-2SO's attention diverts to him.

He tries to shrug nonchalantly, but he feels like it looks like a suppressed spasm. "Jyn's on that facility."

"We know," Cassian enters the cockpit. "What about it?"

"There are stormtroopers there," he explains, "And so is Jyn. And now a whole bunch of other people. It can't a coincidence. We have to go get her." Bodhi thinks. "She might compromise Galen and Fracture."

Cassian shakes his head. "She doesn't know about Galen's business with us or Operation Fracture." And she doesn't.

"She knows about Base One," Bodhi argues.

Cassian shifts his relationships into numbers and equations; human interactions are merely calculations of perfect values into trusting relationships. His best friend is a droid he _reprogrammed_ —though some part of Bodhi really hopes that he and Kay-Tu actually share the position. Cassian is impersonal, though deep down Bodhi knows he isn't.

But there needs to be something other than Bodhi's concern for the girl if they're to go rescue her. The most important thing to Cassian is the rebellion. It's the greatest reason he needs.

"We can't just do what we want, Bodhi." Cassian nods to Kay-Tu. "Go comm Base One and we'll see _their_ input on the matter."

They turn their head simultaneously when they see the boarding ramp lower. Cassian's hand goes straight to his blaster. They stalk towards the cabin.

Chirrut and Baze are standing there in the rain of last night, dripping wet and most likely colder than Bodhi felt earlier—but Chirrut is still smiling. "I see Bodhi Rook has been found. What of Jyn Erso?"

They step inside as Chirrut's partner grunts. "Do you not even _feel_ that she's here, Chirrut?"

He shrugs. "Well, they've been moving her around. Under the mountain, around the platform. Now she's on top. How tall is the tower?"

"You mean she's on top?" Cassian softens the tight grasp on his blaster.

Above ground, the facility has three floors. Below it, so much more…

The very top is Galen's living space. Bodhi's never actually been in it, but his flybys suggest that it's a great place.

"Yes," Chirrut hums as Baze hands him a towel.

Jyn is there; Jyn is with her father. Bodhi hasn't failed. Not yet.

K-2 joins them just as Baze and Chirrut towel off the rest of the storm. "Cassian, mission as previous: retrieve Jyn and Bodhi."

Cassian nods and looks to the two men they rescued in Jedha (Bodhi not included.) "We need to leave you both somewhere else on the planet. There's a protocol for this." He shucks on his coat and flourishes the hood.

All Bodhi thinks is how impractical it is to where a fur coat in a storm.

 **Krennic spends the flight to Eadu** nursing the outrage and humiliation Tarkin had sent his way. It's a kind fire, bright enough to fight against the rare light of the Eadu sunrise, warding off the chill of the trickling rain that sweeps through his shuttle.

He went directly from the ashes of Jedha to this planet of storm. He had, unfortunately, no time to assemble his death squad: no one to assail the unfortunate person who had sent the publicly defected pilot to his doom on Jedha.

His boots squeal against wet metal and he blinks raindrops from his eyes. The weather is somehow kinder than he remembers. His old friend, his colleague, Galen Erso is standing on the platform. "Galen," he greets.

"A wonderful morning, Director Krennic," the other man nods. "This is a surprise visit." Krennic notes the way he says the words almost as if they mean something else.

He nods, "Yes, well, I believed you should hear the success of our commitment from me."

Galen shows shock. "A _success_?"

"Yes, the weapon has been fired," he informs proudly. "Jedha and its Holy City. The last remnants of the traitorous Jedi. You must be very proud."

"Proud as I can be, Orson."

It's false humility, of course. Krennic is certain of that. "I do hope breakfast here is still favorable?"

Galen shrugs, "Why not?"

They make for the mess hall together. An assortment of stormtroopers, engineers, and officers allow them through the brunt of the meal line. A few people, particularly the med center crew, smile at Galen and greet him kindly.

As they sit, Krennic cannot bear his curiosity. "Pardon my asking, old friend, but why the sudden interest of the people?"

Galen coughs softly. "There was a spacecraft that crashed in the canyon last night." Not the first time it has happened. "My daughter was a survivor of the mishap."

"Your daughter?"

His people couldn't find the little girl on Lah'mu, but still Krennic had baited Galen several times with the notion that they would find her. (For the first few years, he did try though. Because Galen was a friend. This activity was, of course, the misadventures Tarkin referenced, to which he stopped sending people to Lah'mu after it started inhibiting the engineers' performances.)

"Yes," he replies within bites of fruit. Krennic sips his caf in thought.

The presence of Galen's daughter is unprecedented. Considering the Erso family's connections to Saw Gerrera, the child must be old acquaintances with the late rebel leader. Perhaps it was Gerrera who retrieved the child before Krennic's stormtroopers could find her. She might be the rebel's ghost. _A weapon the Partisans have developed as long as the Death Star._

But Galen has done so much for the Empire; this is the reward the galaxy treats to him, just as Krennic's success is a reward for his work. But Krennic needs to be sure. Assess the danger, and stop it. This is the last shadow of Saw Gerrera. All Krennic needs to do is shine a light and stamp it away.

"And where has she been," Krennic asks, "all these years?"

Galen shrugs. It appears to be a joy he'd rather not understand. One of the principles Lyra had imprinted upon Galen postmortem. Truth will ruin the tale, accept and be thankful. "Does it really matter, Orson?"

"Well, if she has decided to join the Empire, there is always a study of history," Krennic begins. "In a facility this vital, it is virtually required."

He laughs. "Let her be my daughter first before she becomes my employee, old friend." Krennic is disbelieving, though he has not had a daughter to sympathize with Galen.

"I would just like to speak to the girl, is all," Krennic amends, "You can't hide this from the people in the core, Galen; and you can't properly keep her here until a superior makes a transfer official."

He smiles and sets the cup of caf down. "And fortunate for you, I am a superior willing to do the task."

"I see," Galen appears to agree, "She's in trauma after the crash, but on the road to recovery. She's been made to rest in my quarters."

"What grand accommodations," Krennic comments. "Perhaps you have something to do. I will not be in your way."

He stands and makes for the turbolift, which opens directly onto Galen's _quarters_ on the highest floor. To call it such is an understatement. Krennic made sure to provide him something not unlike a suite. Compared to the others who live in the facility, which burrows deeper underground into the truth of the experiment.

Krennic waits in the lift as it crosses two, three floors into a fairly grand round room, surrounded with transparasteel windows. The girl is sitting on the counter, sipping a cup of bantha milk.

His doubts of genetics fall apart when he sees her eyes.

 **Jyn tries to put the cup down with** care onto the chiseled crystal counter. She was surprised when the droids led her here, to say the least. "This is where my father stays?" She had asked the medical droid MT-R3.

"Yes, Jyn Erso." She still flinches when she hears the droids say her name. They repeated it multiple times in the med center, while they were taking her blood. After which, they put a bacta patch to her ribs and brought her up a turbolift.

Jyn stares around the suite. "Can you get me a glass of bantha milk? Fermented, hopefully." The droid leaves her to scan the entire place.

It doesn't have the duracrete walls of the mercher hall that Kestrel worked—and eventually 'died'—in, or the tall crystal chandeliers of the school Tanith went to (or the steel metal bars where she was first detained.) Every which way she turns, she sees the bronzed mountains of Eadu, and the soft stain on the invisisteel windows showered with rain.

There is only one bed in the whole suite, as expected. It smells of detergent and nothing else. Her father probably doesn't sleep in it too often. A protocol droid is arranging datapads and holodocs on a shelf, and all around doesn't really notice her.

In another partition is a beautifully cluttered workspace. Stack of flimsi are everywhere, flickering holoprojectors, maybe running on her father's dream on kyber crystals as an energy source. It looks like a place her father would spend his life contentedly.

There's also a 'fresher. Not a sonic shower—or, stars forbid, the public one in Wobani—but an actual shower with water and everything. Jyn freshens up for an obscene amount of time, finds a stack of clothes once she steps out and puts them on. She feels better knowing there isn't a logo on the loose-fitting green shirt.

She returns to the living room to find the milk she asked for on the counter. Jyn sighs and takes a sip. It was beautiful, better than where she'd stayed in her previous three lives—or anywhere.

The sound of the turbolift plays to remind Jyn of the cost of this all. "Papa?"

"I'm afraid your father is caught up in something at the moment."

Jyn doesn't remember his voice—a faint whisper, perhaps a few words heard beyond closed doors. But she knows his posture, so distinctly etched into her memories in the dirt and the faint green rings of Lah'mu. Saw Gerrera stands there, lighting up the hatch again. Oh, Jyn has hoped the hatch would finally break apart, and she can climb out to join the light.

And finally, after years and years, she comes face to face with the man in white. "It's you." She narrows her eyes at him. The protocol droids are in the other rooms, keeping the place tidy. Jyn is alone in the waiting room with the man who took her father from her.

"Pardon?"

Jyn remembers those moments under Saw's care where she imagined finding the man in white, stealing Saw's overlarge blaster and shooting this man in his sleep.

She shakes her head. "You don't look a day older than when I last saw you on Lah'mu." Letting it be, allowing the man in white to sleep into another day, it's the only thing that kept the shadows in her cave at bay.

"The benefits of middle age, Miss Erso," he smiles acidly. "Though deteriorating memory is a curse. I forget you were there as well." Jyn wants him to remember— _needs_ him to remember what he's done to her.

Because men like him don't deserve quick deaths. "It's hard to forget a day like that." She'd spit his name back at him if she only knew it.

"My condolences for your mother." Yet _he_ apologizes. The Alliance does not. "My name is Orson Krennic, Director of Imperial Weapons Research and your father's superior."

"Are you here to take me to the Empire, too?" It's a stupid question. She is already there. They found her in the ruins of a ship, ready to fight them off with a half-battered blaster and three broken ribs.

Director Orson Krennic takes seven strides from the entrance of the turbolift to the cracking leather couch in the room. "And you would rather I didn't?"

"I don't know what I'd rather," she replies, "But I won't be against it." She will not. This is the only way she can be kept with her father without anyone taking him away.

"So you've considered the Empire?" His eyes lock into hers the way Cassian would, but she squirms under his glare. His conviction makes her uncomfortable.

Maybe it's the inhibition of the few sips of bantha milk, or the soft comfort of being in a homely suite after taking an actual shower three days without one; but she tells him the truth. "I've promised an old friend that I wouldn't. And for so many years, I didn't."

"I take it you mean Saw Gerrera." He leans on his elbows, lacing his fingers as she turns the barstool to face him.

Jyn nods.

"I offer my condolences again. He died in the mining accident in Jedha."

A mining accident? It's no mining accident. It's his weapon. The Death Star, they call it. Orson Krennic forced her father to make such a monstrosity. Orson Krennic forced her father out of her life. "Saw and I had a falling out, but that's… sad to hear."

"Do you take me for a fool?" Krennic remarks. Somewhere in her mind, Jyn actually does. "You don't deny your connection to Saw Gerrera, and in extension his rebel allegiance. Perhaps you already know what goes on in this facility, beneath what you see."

"I didn't fight with Saw's people to bring down the Empire," Jyn hisses. "I fought with them because they were a people I could trust. Because that day on Lah'mu took my parents from me, and they were the ones who found me." He knows the day. He has to know which day she's talking about.

"I promised Saw once never to look for the people who took my father," Jyn tells him. "So I found my father instead."

Aside from his rhythmic chant, Chirrut had also recited several passages. Jyn plays one in her mind and listens to it echo within her cave. _Home shall be your constant. You need not find it, for it shall find you._

When she was lost, Saw found her. Saw and his people gave her home. They _were_ her home. Until the fateful day their devotion to the cause took them from her. Jyn's learned that the people who care don't really leave. They are only taken. Like her mother, and her father, and Saw…

The Alliance took her mother. This man took her father, and his ambition took Saw. "If you answer some questions, I will make sure you can stay here with your father." Jyn can't trust his word, but oh how desperately does she want to be in this safety. Long enough, she's been an orphan. Long enough, she's been lost.

She wants home to find her. If she just answers…

This is what she promised the Alliance. She isn't going to talk for them. No matter what the Alliance has done for her, Saw died for what they believed in.

"What do you want to know?"

 **Galen finds Krennic on his** way up to his suite. "Has the transfer been made?"

"I have all I need," Orson nods. "It's official. Congratulations, Galen. You have your daughter back."

He smiles. "Thank you, old friend."

"And I have to do the work I was meant to do," Orson notes as they turn away from each other and Galen makes for the turbolift.

The ride up is always so silent. Galen has always thought maybe some music would liven up the turbolift, but then he thinks how stupid it would be to stand alone for minutes listening to cantina music.

"Jyn?" He steps into the suite. It's overly lavish, too much for him; too little against what his daughter deserves. The droids set up his workroom with a bed, moving whatever belongings he had in it to his bedroom.

Galen hopes the droid didn't find anything important; anything that could lead the Empire to the Alliance.

He rolls his fingers around Lyra's necklace, and remembers Lah'mu. He remembers the Death Troopers, guns at the ready but not quite aiming for anything. Then the plasma bolts from the side of the mountain, born from the guns of the Alliance. It's unknown who shot first, but they know who was shot first.

But they didn't shoot his daughter. She is there in front of him, grown and alive. Galen missed vital years, where he could have chased away the young boys who saw her face—the face that reminds him often of Lyra. He holds her necklace out. "You left this at the med center."

She takes it and puts it on around her neck. "Thank you, Papa." He isn't used to her voice, deeper than that of the child he remembers. It's hardened and practiced, and broken. What has this galaxy done to his stardust?

Galen brushes a piece of her hair behind her ear. "Where were you—all these years?"

Jyn draws them both into an embrace. "I waited on Lah'mu. Years, looking for you… and Mama." Her next blink takes to long to open. "Then Saw found me." She hesitates. "I looked for you. I was looking for you, then our ship crashed."

"But Jedha—" She was with Saw Gerrera. Saw was on Jedha. Jedha is dead. Dead because of the Death Star. _His_ monster. Galen shakes his head.

"I know." She knows about the Death Star. She was on Jedha. She settles her head at the crook of her neck. No matter how grown she has become, she is still small. "Papa, I'm _alive_. I wasn't there on Jedha. I'm _here_."

 **Baze has beat his heart to** the rhythm of Chirrut's praying so often that he knows the precise moment that constant drone ends. Beyond the echo of dead whispers is the sound of Eadu as Bodhi and Cassian push them through its living spirit.

"Where are we going?" Chirrut asks the droid, who has been made to sit with them as the two young men take to flying the ship.

The droid's head reels up to look at them both. Baze recalls the argument that went between the captain and the droid when he was told to sit in the back. "A village in the valley."

Chirrut chuckles. "Try saying that ten times fast." He then returns to his prayer. Baze puts his hand to his chest to conduct the pumps to every verse of Chirrut's chant. He feels his hand shiver within the warm cabin.

"A village in the valley. A village in the valley. A village in the—" The droid's speech eventually degrades in something along the lines of _avillyvichvalley_. Baze grunts and returns to listening to Chirrut's voice.

He doesn't even feel them descend. "We're here," Cassian tells them as he presses the boarding ramp open. "Just Chirrut and Baze."

"Why?" Chirrut is naturally curious. And yet, when he is asked a question, he doesn't answer. (And if he does, it's usually unhelpful.)

Bodhi looks better than he did on Jedha. The flying must have cleared his head if not just a little. "There's a mission protocol for what's about to happen next. No offense or anything, but you guys aren't part of it. Not that I don't like you—"

"They understand, Bodhi," Cassian interjects.

Baze nods. Just to prove that they do. K-2SO approaches them with an umbrella. He tries to suppress the small laugh that pops in his throat, but instead gets a strange look from Chirrut.

"What is it?" Chirrut asks. "Is it something I can't see?" Baze thinks of nodding, but then remembers that he won't be able to see the gesture. He makes a sound instead.

"You should really stop doing that," his partner comments. Baze rolls his eyes. "I saw that by the way. Don't ask how I know." As if Chirrut is ever going to answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Kudos & Comment!_


	8. What Else Are You Young For?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Feel While You Still Can, Part 1**

**There is only a week left before Operation** Fracture is over, and Galen will have to deliver the plans. The sudden arrival of Jyn takes this out of his head for a while. She's walking in front of him, her shoulders tense and her hair down.

Beyond the sounds of their nonchalant conversation is the rumble of an Ion Engine. He turns his head towards the window. Galen believes he has seen Cassian's ship enough to know that the one of the platform isn't so. Jyn stops in front of him, as does Krennic. It is Cassian's ship.

"Who is it now?" Orson asks.

Galen imagines a mirror in front of him, as if he's only rehearsing a lie. "Some people I invited from the Futures." He shrugs. "I forgot about it when Jyn arrived." She smiles at him; and the past five days have made the three years suddenly void, the three years he lied because he though she was dead. He lies now to keep her alive.

Krennic, too, smiles. They're both legacies of the Futures project. "Well, shall we greet them now?"

He leads them onto the platform, still wet from last night's rain (or perhaps last week's—on Eadu, one can never be sure.) Galen takes a few steps to stand by Jyn's side. The three of them watch as Cassian Andor's ship lands.

He's forgone his fur coat, perhaps to protect it from the rain. Cassian steps onto the landing pad, followed by his droid, then the ship flies off. Perhaps it's Bodhi who's flying it, all the way to the docking bay at the bottom of the valley.

Under Galen's hold, Jyn stiffens. He remembers how he planned their lives. Where she too would join the Futures. (And he remembers his little hopes, to introduce Captain Andor to his daughter. He can fulfill one of his plans.)

"Officer Erso," Cassian introduces himself. His accent is gone. It makes his voice crisp, Imperial; as if Basic is the only language he knows. "Thank you for the invitation. I'm Willix Pashna."

Galen smiles. For once in three years, it doesn't seem like a lie. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Pashna. This is Director Krennic, of Weapons Research," he gestures to Orson, "And my daughter Jyn." Cassian extends a hand to them both. Krennic takes it with well-practiced je ne sais quoi, while Jyn gingerly grasps it with an unnatural stiffness.

Krennic clears his throat. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Jyn." He nods to Cassian. "Mr. Pashna, but I'm afraid I have some things I need to do. I'm not paid to for meet-and-greets, after all." Galen makes a small laugh at Orson's joke. At least, he hopes it was a joke.

The weapons director gives one last smile, however acidic it may be, to the three of them, before turning back and returning to the facility. They follow after him, stopping just by the shade of the awnings at the side.

K-2SO stands behind them all. The lights of his eyes flicker, and Galen knows that he's telling Cassian something out of their earshot. "Go check on Bodhi," the captain says with more volume. The droid tilts his head and walks away.

Galen turns to face Cassian, "This wasn't how I hoped you'd meet." He glances at his daughter. Five days ago, he didn't think they even _could_ meet.

"Jyn, this is Captain Cassian Andor, of the Rebel Alliance."

The stiffness of her body shifts to the set of her jaw. "I know who he is, Papa." Galen waves away the statement. She knows about the Alliance, he told her about it days ago.

He shifts his attention to the young man. "You're not due for another week. Did High Command shift Fracture ahead?"

"Not here for Fracture," Cassian shakes his head. His accent is back, heavy and obvious. "I'm here for her." He jerks his head towards Jyn.

Jyn can know about Cassian. Galen understands that. But Cassian knows about her… The Alliance thinks Jyn is dead; they told him she was dead.

 _How do they know each other?_ "What is this about, Cassian?" Galen is stricken with a sudden curiosity. He wants to know how the Alliance is aware of Jyn. He wants to know a-many things.

"I know you're with the Rebel Alliance, and I didn't want to know why when you told me about it, Papa," Jyn then turns to Cassian. "But if the Alliance wants to take me, I'm not going, because I don't have to listen to their orders."

"I'm fine here, captain," Jyn tacks on. "I went here for my father, not for this business with the Alliance. I said this before, but you weren't there so I'll say it again: I want no part of it."

Cassian rolls his eyes.

"Wait, you _know_ about my daughter. And you _know_ she's alive. Were you—"

"Galen, no one lied to you," Cassian says. "The Alliance thought she was dead too."

This time Jyn rolls her eyes and mutters under her breath. "The Alliance didn't even look." Perhaps Galen hasn't missed her angsty teenage phase yet.

"If you thought she was dead," Galen raises his voice above their. He isn't fond of it, but it's the only way they'll actually stop. "Then why are you looking for her now?"

"Because we found her," Cassian explains. "Just before Jedha. And now she's compromising Fracture."

"Don't talk about me as if I'm not here, Andor," she comments.

Galen coughs. "She's not compromising anything, Cassian."

"Compromising _what_?" Jyn interjects. "Your covert Death Star sabotage?"

The young man's brown eyes widen as he darts around for any possible listening ears, then he turns those eyes to Galen. "You told her?"

"She's my daughter," he justifies, "I'm not lying to her."

Jyn and Cassian appear to be in their own personal conversation, in which Galen is only a spectator. "Look, I don't _hate_ the Alliance to the point that I'd sell you out," she hisses. They're still in public: they can't yell. "I thought we established that on Yavin 4."

This isn't how Galen imagined their dynamic. They're the kind of people meant to get along well. But here they are, half-yelling at each other. "Would you both stop yelling _please_ ," Galen asks. " _That_ will compromise the mission most."

They stop to look at him. Jyn 's mouth is agape, frozen mid-argument. Cassian's face is frozen in a scowl, but raises his eyebrows in attention as Galen calls them. "Now, where's your droid?"

 **Bodhi stands at attention the moment** he sees K-2SO approach. "What is it?"

"The captain sent me to check on you," the droid replies. In other words, Cassian didn't want the droid around at the moment. Either way, Bodhi feels offended that the captain set him as a babysitter.

"I still knew where the landing pads were, Kay." It's been three years, and his memory is cloudy, but his muscle memory took the reins. "I'm fine."

"I believe Cassian sent me due to the statistical probability that someone will know your face," K-2 states. "There is a reason High Command did not send you to pilot the Fracture missions."

"That's why I haven't gone out," he explains. His memory is cloudy, his muscle memory surprisingly succinct, but it's only been three years. There is bound to be at least one pilot, or one engineer, who knows Bodhi's face.

He looks out the viewport, watching two pilots pass by their ship, whispering to each other. Ships are designed to be soundproof, inside and out. One turns around quickly, a motion almost gone unnoticed if Bodhi hadn't been looking for something of the sort.

They approach a stormtrooper, sharing a conversation too far for a reading of lips and physically impossible to listen to. The trooper raises his visor, and if the helmet wasn't in the way, or the invisisteel barrier, Bodhi can be sure that they're looking right at him.

"Bodhi Rook," K-2SO rushes to the co-pilot seat and begins to fumble with the controls.

He mumbles as he sits himself at the pilot's chair. "I know."

"It would be best that we leave the landing port within the moment."

Bodhi nods his head frantically and runs his eyes over all the controls. "I know!" A whole squad escapes from the nearby hangar, drawing guns toward them but not shooting. Bodhi doubts they'd actually be able to hit them to begin with.

He sees, just below them and behind the troopers, a man in a billowing white cape, running out to watch them fly away into the canyon. It's the man Bodhi saw speaking with Galen and Jyn on the platform.

"Let's go pick up Chirrut and Baze," Bodhi fiddles with the controls.

 **Krennic is supposed to be on his transport. He was** in the hangar waiting for it to arrive. He should be on it by now, heading for Coruscant.

He isn't.

"That was the defected pilot?" He came to Eadu for that purpose.

The woman nods. "Yessir. He made the Corulag runs with us."

Krennic's job ob Eadu is not over, and apparently either is the pilot's. "Whose ship was it?"

"Willix Pashna, Director."

The Futures boy. Krennic doesn't think for a second that it can be him. No one so indebted to the Empire would actively push against it. The pilot must have a contact on the planet.

He takes out his commlink, to contact the bridge officers heading down with his transport. "Dispatch the Death Troopers to Eadu. I will meet them on the landing platform." He nods his gratitude to the female pilot and returns to the main building of the Research Center.

The soft patters on the duracrete become daggers as Eadu's late afternoon storm brushes in. Krennic tugs his gloves tighter around his fingers as he makes his march. He calls out, "Galen!"

He can see Galen by the turbolift, sending his daughter up with an embrace. Pashna is there with them. Just before the steel doors of the lift close, Krennic can see Galen's eyes widen one more time on her face. The two men turn about to face Krennic.

"Mister Pashna," he begins. "Something interesting has been discovered regarding your transport.

The young man replies in direct and polished tones, but the steadiness of his voice doesn't hide the surprise in his expression. "What about it?"

Krennic has a small urge to hold his arms akimbo, but he doesn't. It would look silly for the situation. "Your pilot is a defector, and appears to have used you to make contact with a spy here. He fled the docking bay, but a transport for your return to Coruscant has been arranged."

In all honesty, it hasn't, but Krennic feels his obligation as a legacy of the Futures. Pashna's eyebrows try to escape his head in surprise, but his thick brown hair keeps them in place. "I need to make a comm."

Krennic nods and looks to Galen. "Gather your engineers. I have an announcement to make."

"Why?" Galen asks. It is curious, not defiant. He barely makes a gesture, as several of the people milling about join in one single file, as Krennic takes them out onto the raining platform.

He smiles acidly as he sees his transport descend onto the platform, unloading his squad of black troopers. They march down the platform, boots squealing as the rain begins to pound harder in account of the nearing storm.

Krennic looks to Galen Erso. The man stands unconcerned, blinking raindrops out of his eyes. He scans the line of staff, drifting and herd-like. They huddle as if sharing heat and protection in the spitting storm. "Gentlemen. One of you has betrayed the Empire. One of you conspired, and has remained in contact, with a pilot who has long since absconded to the Rebellion. I urge that traitor to step forward.

On cue, the death squad takes position and levels their weapons at the engineers before them.

Not one of the engineers answers Krennic's accusation. He didn't really expect to.

"No one?" He asks. "The traitor will still be executed, but at least he can die making a stand. Really, it's a small price to pay for the incompetence you've paid the Empire."

They look among themselves intently, as if conducting investigations within their mind. Galen does nothing else but stand at his side, watching the engineers intently against the curtain of rain.

"Very well," Krennic says. "I'll consider it a group effort then." His words are cruel and sweet, but Krennic feels no remorse. He feels no shame for finding satisfaction from his form of justice. "Ready," he announces, and his troops check the settings on their rifles with a metallic click.

"Aim," he adds, and the death squad takes aim. "And—"

Galen takes action. He dashes between Krennic and the engineers, spins about on the wet platform. "Orson, no." He spreads his arms, as if effort alone can block the troopers' shots. "Spare them. They have nothing to do with this."

Krennic looks into the face of the man he'd befriended so long ago, and he waits. "Why?"

"Because it was _me_ ," Galen cries. He is drenched by the storm, tired and wild-eyed; he looks like a man abandoned by his own brilliance. "It was me."

He crooks a finger towards Galen. "Fire," he spits.

Krennic doesn't watch the crimson bolts flare against the gray storm clouds of Eadu's afternoon storm, doesn't bother glancing at the engineers as they tumble down. He doesn't watch as Galen's distinct white robes char themselves into darkness. Krennic watches Galen's face, a perfect mask of shock and fury and _pain_.

"Papa!" Jyn Erso's cry is hoarse and raw as she runs onto the platform, struggling to find traction on the wet metal. Krennic's hand drifts to his sidearm, but he doesn't grasp it. This young girl is the last of memory of Galen Erso, his friend and colleague.

His hand moves to clasp his other. "It had to be done, Miss Erso. A close friend or not, he was a traitor to the Empire." he says. How amazing it is that moments beyond death, it becomes easy to shift to the past tense. "We both lost someone important today."

"A transport to Coruscant will be prepared for you," Krennic adds. "I imagine you would like to visit your mother and…"—his voice wavers slightly, but he is quick to catch it—"…bury your father."

He follows the line of the black troops into the shuttle as the young Erso girl cries over her father, surrounded by the bodies of the others.

 **The rules are not to interfere** when Galen is caught. The rules are to keep the Rebellion going.

"Galen!" Cassian runs out to the platform. Jyn is there as well, crying over his body. She got out of the turbolift before Cassian could notice, while he was still sending a message to Kay-Tu to bring the ship around the back entrance.

Cassian steps closer to her. "Jyn."

"No," her voice isn't the same. It is broken and full and cracking and empty. She is raw with emotion. "Go away."

He shakes his head. "Jyn," he tries again.

"I said _go_ _away_ , captain." She doesn't look at him.

Cassian steps closer. "I'm not doing anything."

She stands up brusquely and glares at him, meeting his eyes with Galen's. "Why _didn't_ you do anything? You just stood there and _watched_. You watched him die; you _let_ him die."

Cassian forces the life out of his face. "He knew the risks. The agreement was that we wouldn't do anything if—"

"You didn't do anything!" Jyn shouts with a ragged and angry sort of sobbing. "Now he's… he's…" Her breath hitches. "I guess the Rebellion hasn't changed at all."

He is in disbelief, and he plays that emotion onto his mask. "Hasn't changed? Jyn, I have been in this fight since I was six years old. The rebellion has changed a lot."

"You still kill," she fights back. "The _Alliance_ still kills."

"We're fighting for freedom, Jyn, not peace. People will die along the way."

Her eyes blaze in a wet fury, dripping tears and hate. Her yell becomes a whisper "People like my mother?"

Cassian's face betrays nothing, and neither does his tongue.

"I was there that day. The Empire was standing there, just like you were," her voice drips from a whisper to a snarl. "And it was the Alliance with their guns drawn."

"Did I draw a gun?" he argues. "Did I pull a trigger? Did I?" The ink-drawn fire in her eyes feeds on her tears. "Did I?!"

"You might as well have!" Jyn steps forward. She stands so close to him, on her tiptoes so she could reach a menacing height. She smells like a rainstorm over a field of flowers. "Go take this thing you call freedom and kill another family. It's to save the galaxy," she hisses. "It isn't _wrong_!" Jyn's mocking him, and he can't find the right words to get her to back down.

But she does. She throws something at him and turns around. Her voice softens into something sad. "Bodhi told me you and my father were friends." He catches it in his hand, a small holodrive. "There's the last thing my father ever said to me. He hugged me and whispered it in my ear. It's your blasted Death Star plans."

An Imperial shuttle lowers itself onto the wet metal platform, and they watch as a group of stormtroopers lifts Galen's body from the ground and onto the transport. She doesn't look back at him, and for that Cassian is thankful. He doesn't want to look at her eyes.

"Now excuse me," she says coldly, not deigning to face him. "I need to bury my father." Cassian watches the spacecraft disappear into the rain, Jyn Erso with it. He turns around, to see Bodhi and K-2SO standing beneath the awning.

Jyn has wracked his confidence from him, but Cassian knows how to wear a mask. "Now they know that Galen was a traitor," he tosses the chip to K-2, "But they have no idea _what_ exactly Galen did, or if he was even with the Alliance. All they think they know is that Galen Erso helped you." He jerked his head towards Bodhi.

The three of them walk to the back entrance, where Baze and Chirrut stand at the ready. Cassian maintains his face. _Forget emotion. Forget expression. There should be nothing left to feel._

He can see the disappointment in their faces. They expected Jyn to be with them. "Where is Jyn Erso?" Chirrut asks.

"Gone." And it shouldn't matter. She chose her path, but she knows too much about the Rebellion. She hates the Rebellion too much. It matters. It will always matter.

Before he enters the cockpit, he catches a final snippet in Chirrut's conversation. "We'll see her again, Bodhi. I am almost sure of it."

Cassian, safely out of their earshot in the cabin, looks to K-2SO and asks. "What are the chances of that, Kay-Tu?"

The droid takes a seat in his co-pilot's chair. "Highly probable, captain."

 **Orson Krennic became Jyn** Erso's legal sponsor in Coruscant, though the agreement appeared unwilling on one side. Lianna Hallik was proclaimed as one of the many dead in the mining accident in Jedha City. Tanith Ponta was taken onto death row. A wealthy account in Betha II was recently emptied.

Captain Andor and his crew fled to the Demesel system, where the plans of the Death Star remained in pursuit of the Empire. The plans were then transferred to the Tantive IV, in an effort to evade Imperial starships.

Antilles made course for Tatooine as Andor escaped to Zeltros to replace his ship. Days later, they flew back to Yavin 4. The plans—and Antilles' ship—did not arrive with them.

Jyn Erso was taken into the University of Coruscant, unknowingly by others to be her second time. After her graduation, she was invited to join the Imperial Naval Fleet, an invitation she immediately rebuffed.

Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star as the Empire's first display of its power---headed by one Wilhuff Tarkin. The Alliance knew the truth, and so did Jyn Erso.

The facility in Scarif was destroyed, the only survivors were two visitors who had managed to escape atmo moments before the Citadel's destruction: Jyn Erso and Orson Krennic.

Two rebels were discovered in Coruscant and forcibly taken aboard the Death Star. An unregistered ship entered the atmo of Yavin 4, its passengers calling it the _Millennium Falcon_. The schematics of the Death Star were on board, along with Leia Organa.

An intercepted transmission stated that the Death Star was aiming for Yavin 4, and that the rebel prisoners were going to be forced to watch. The rebels identified to be Moran and Elohim.

Jyn Erso was once again offered a position on the Fleet. She said no.

Luke Skywalker—one of Princess Leia Organa's rescuers—delivered the final blow that caused the destruction of the Death Star. Officers Moran and Remorso were killed aboard the battle station. The only death that mattered to Jyn Erso was Orson Krennic's.

With the Empire's new light on the Rebel Base, the Alliance relocated to Echo Base on Hoth. Bodhi Rook, Baze Malbus and Chirrut Îmwe remained as the crew of Captain Cassian Andor. For almost a year, this crew—and the Rebel Alliance—kept the base of operations in Echo Base running heavily on the Intelligence Spy Network.

For that whole year, Jyn Erso visited her parents everyday.


	9. May Death Never Stop You (reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **The Wayward Still Carry On**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aggressively not beta read and also the longest chapter so far ~~(it's always the longest when it's just a Jyn and Cassian chapter...)~~

**Krennic looked more menacing than Jyn ever** remembered, wearing an expression more poisonous than the one he wore years ago. "Galen!" She heard the man in white yell.

They were by the turbolift, a convenience on their part as they were only headed for the hangar where Bodhi supposedly was. Her father wrapped her in his embrace, to which she returned immediately.

"In your bedroom," he whispered in her ear. She tensed slightly, hearing the uneasy note playing in his voice. "Under the mattress. There's a holodisc. I want you to get it." Then he let her go.

Cassian Andor was standing there, and he looked to be flushing—as if he was witnessing something that he wasn't supposed to see. Jyn's father held her at an arm's length, his eyes still asking that same old question.

"I will," she answered with the words what he wanted to hear. Whispered it like a prayer. Murmured it like a plea. Her eyes dragged to Cassian just as the she stepped into the turbolift and watched the metal doors close.

His face was frozen, emotionless and unmoving. Just as the doors set a strait her father's eyes met hers, sending her into a trance that only said one thing: _Go._

So she did. Floor after floor, she went up into the round tower: an aerial view of the terror that was to rage below her. She rushed straightaway to her bedroom, creeping her fingers under the soft mattress until her fingers reached for something hard and round and stared at it.

Jyn released the weary exhale she never realized she was holding, and then shoved the holodisc into her pocket. She rushed back to the lift, down the transparent glass tube. The sound of a thousand thundering footsteps rung in the silence of the elevator, into her bones. Reality bit Jyn in the neck, seeping the trance from her bloodstream.

The engineers she had gotten to know in her few days at the facility were lined up before a similar set of black stormtroopers from her past. Despite everything that stewed in her systems and the tingling down her back, she quivered in an eerie tranquil.

She was on Lah'mu again. In silence, her own breath and the heavy pant of the Rebel Alliance down her neck.

Then blaster fire. Louder than the sound of Jedha as it shattered under the Death Star's touch. Her eyes opened along with the door of the lift.

Glints of bodies strewn across her view, keeled over the storm. The unique shine of a single white uniform. _I want no part of it._

"Papa!"

The floor of the turbolift was clean, apart from one distinct set of wet bootprints. She wished there were two. She wished she'd pulled her father into that turbolift with her.

Jyn ran closer, enough to see Krennic's quivering fingers reaching for the blaster at his side. But he didn't. His gloved hands found their lock at the center and met together in a sad clasp.

Jyn didn't look at him, but at her father. Raindrops sprayed against her as cold daggers at her back, and a harsh gust of wind pushed her to her knees right at her father's side.

He was warm; he was alive. She wrapped her arms around him as he did only minutes earlier. His head lolled and he stared at the dark gray clouds before turning her way. Jyn could see the pain and fear and relief in his face.

"Stardust?" He whispered, and she nodded. Her eyes stung with tears and rainwater. He was watching her with sad intensity. "Is it with you?" The weight of the thumb-sized disc in her pockets weighs on her too heavily.

She nodded frantically. "Yes," she muttered for every time her head bobbed.

"It can be destroyed," he released a painful exhale and wet his lips. "Someone has to destroy it."

Painfully slowly, as the rain ran down her back in colder strokes, he lifted one arm. His wrist twitched almost imperceptibly. Three soft fingertips dragged across Jyn's cheek and then fell.

"Papa…" Her throat felt thick, yet everything felt hollow. "No. No…"

She smoothed his hair away from his forehead. He was still warm, but his chest no longer rose and fell. Jyn took his hand and held it tight, as if she could squeeze the life back into him. "Papa…Papa! Come on."

Jyn looked inward, to the cave in her mind; but her father's blue shadow no longer glowed and its words no longer echoed. Even Saw's silver ghost had abandoned her.

There was only darkness and emptiness.

"It had to be done, Miss Erso," Krennic said over her. Jyn lifted her head to try and send him a glare, but it must have looked pathetic against all her tears. "A close friend or not, he was a traitor to the Empire." _Because he believed in the Alliance_ , Jyn muttered bitterly to her own heart."We both lost someone important today."

Jyn lost him long ago, where she was alone for years. She is finally the orphan she always thought herself to be. Her father was dead, blood staining his pristine white uniform and his heart dead in his chest.

**She wakes up screaming, as she very** often has in the past year.

Her first instinct is to run, shove a blaster into her boot and run until everything stops chasing her. Until the nightmares bear away.

Jyn bites her tongue. She isn't alone; she is truly, finally, an orphan, but her father's dying eyes still watch her from the hatch every now and then. On most days, it's only dark.

Her newest instinct is to sit up straight from her soft bed in Coruscant, rip open her chest and pull out the starsforsaken thing that gives her all this pain.

Habitually, she gazes towards the window. Curtains drape the holes. They haven't opened in days, and she still isn't ready to open them a year later.

Those curtains are the last partition between her and the reality she works hard to avoid. But reality is dark now.

It isn't the first time she wakes so suddenly late at night.

She groans and stands. Her heart still hammers in her chest, her face wet with last minute's tears. The cool crystal necklace at her throat is cold like the rain of Eadu and the chill of Lah'mu's night. There are nights upon nights where Jyn imagines the necklace strangle her in her sleep. She pulls it over her head, burning a line onto her neck as the necklace comes out.

The grief-riddled girl throws the necklace and runs out of her house immediately. She can never sleep after reliving it all another time. She can barely handle the dreams of her mother falling on the ground, much more as she kneels over her father's body and feels his heart fade away.

Pins and needles shoot up her legs, but no pain flares. In fact, it feels soothing. The more weight she sets, the better it feels. So she runs, down the cold streets, to where she always finds herself.

Jyn remembers her first day here. The day she was to bury her father was the day she would first visit her mother's grave. It was also the day she first saw Orson Krennic in black, the first day she saw Orson Krennic cry.

Krennic is buried in another part of the planet. Not a kind memorial in a silent corner of world, but a grand ceremony for the heroes of the Empire who died in defense of the Death Star.

The truth about her father never reached Coruscant. The people here believe that the Alliance snuck in and killed everyone with involvement of the development of a planet killer. The people gave her father a peaceful place to rest alongside her mother.

But Jyn is not the only person there. There is a hooded figure, a silhouette blanketed by a soft halo of light from the small holograms of Galen and Lyra Erso.

Normally, she'd leave the other visitors of the cemetery alone, but this one stands before the blue ghost of her father. In her memories, all Jyn has preserved are his eyes that she sees in the mirror. She turns inward, but the cave is empty and the voice is gone.

"Who are you and what are you doing?" Jyn reaches for the blaster in her boot, which she had relieved from its place under her pillow earlier that evening.

The cloaked shadow turns around and shucks of his hood. Jyn checks the blaster at a stun setting and aims. "Captain Andor." He too is in her nightmares, standing as her father falls onto the ground. Sometimes, he even takes a blaster and shoots her in the heart.

His voice is the way she remembers it, accented and husky. "It's Major now, actually."

"Don't care." He gets promoted for everything he's done. What has he done? He watched her father die, and did nothing to stop it.

She tries to get angry, tries to force everything she's felt in her nightmares into her eyes; but it doesn't want to. She's burned out that anger a long time ago.

"I'm just here to pay my respects, Jyn." He says to her, both hands raised to prove he isn't readying an attack. But he's in the Imperial center; she won't put it against him to carry a blaster in his boot too.

She shrugs and replaces the weapon. Hopefully no one actually saw her pointing it at some random mourner. "Don't let me stop you," she says as she moves closer to where he stands, into the light of her parents' holograms.

The Cassian Andor she remembers and the Cassian Andor her father told her about are one and the same man: a man who could get what he needed with the right words. The words he seems to be looking for now.

Cassian coughs within their silence, "You look good, Jyn." He shrugs. "I guess the Empire does that to the people who help them." Ah, the wrong words.

"You've looked better," Jyn comments. His skin is grayer than her memory allows her to recall; his eyes are sunken yet alert. If anything, he has the air of a man who is tired and paranoid.

He tilts his head to the side and exhales a silent laugh. "You might've already heard, but we destroyed the Death Star. Your father helped us turn it around." Her father's last words were to destroy that monster. If only…

"Good on him then," she states. Jyn bends down to pick a small flower from a bouquet someone had left on her father's grave, and leaves it over her mother's.

She turns back around to see him watching her.

"Jyn, do you blame me,"—a pause—"for your father?"

_Yes. I do. I should._

"No," she mumbles.

Jyn should hate him. He boiled her anger and left it to stew as he allowed the Empire to take her father and make her an orphan one last time. And for months upon months, she subsisted on that anger, and it burned her too.

But she can't hate him. He's been broken long before she cracked.

She closes and her eyes and walks away. "Best of luck to the Alliance, Cassian."

Cassian spins on his heel faster than she can move away, and he grabs her by the wrist. "Jyn, what are you doing?"

"I'm _leaving_ ," she shakes her head. It's dark and it's late and she needs to go back to the house. The house where she and her parents lived before Lah'mu, before the Death Star.

His hand holds over her thin wrist. She's a wisp of smoke; ready to fly away any second like her father's last breath. "You know what I mean."

Jyn doesn't try to pull her hand back. "I'm living my life, Cassian."— _the way my father would have wanted._ No, this isn't what he asked her on Jedha. This isn't what he asked her on Eadu.

Cassian steps in front of her. "You think your father would be proud of you, Jyn?"

Somehow, Saw has found the flint in her heart, igniting the fire in her one last time. She doesn't try to close her eyes and stop him.

She doesn't care if maybe this is the last warmth she'll ever feel. This fire will be the only thing she has, and it will consume her until there is nothing left for her to do but choke on her own smoke.

Because all time has done to her is kill her slowly. It has siphoned the warmth she's lived on, and all Jyn has ever been in cold.

"You don't know what my father would be proud of," Jyn hisses. "My father would have wanted me to be happy. I _am_ happy."

No, this isn't what her father would have wanted. She knows what he asked her; his soft words on Jedha as he told her he was proud. Jyn just needs a reminder; she just needs to hear his voice and remember his words.

"No," Cassian argues, "you're alone."

Jyn Erso has always been alone. "Why can't I be both?" She already knows the answer.

She will never be both. She has never been happy on her lonesome. Her ninth, tenth and eleventh name days are testaments to that fact. "Because that's just who you are, Jyn," Cassian says as his hold on her weakens. "You're still the girl your father told me about."

Her father. She moves her gaze to the hologram of her father, and he's alive again in the hatch she's hid in for years. Galen Erso revels in the warmth of the raging embers, and his green eyes have a fire in them that Jyn has only ever seen in herself.

There is a _need_ in his dead eyes as there was in her before.

What her father would have wanted was for her to take all five thousand pieces of her heart, sweep them all up into a dustbin.

And pour it all back in.

"My father is dead," she spits at Cassian. "And so is that little girl." Jyn steps out of the Erso family's final resting place and into the dark reality of Coruscant.

 

**Of all things, Cassian Andor did** not expect to see Jyn Erso again. Well, no, he did. He had planned on visiting her later that day at her house. What he did not expect was for them to run into each other at Galen's grave.

He visits a cantina, where a rebel cell most commonly likes to gather. Cassian stays among them until late morning; and he is still sober.

"Kay-Tu," Cassian strides into the warehouse and tosses his coat on the empty leather couch. Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze have situated themselves on the floor, playing sabacc. "You didn't tell me she liked taking midnight walks to go visit her parents."

His three teammates look up from their game as the droid steps away from the computer. They know which _she_ Cassian talks about.

"Jyn Erso lives next to her parents' dead bodies," the droid comments. ("Cheery," Bodhi adds.) "The statistical probability of her visiting them daily has always been high."

Baze raises an eyebrow. "At midnight?"

"I thought we were spying on Jyn," Bodhi says as Chirrut lays down his hand of cards—then he groans because the blind man has won again. "That kind of information is something we're bound to get eventually."

"Cassian." Chirrut hands the jumbled cards for Bodhi to reshuffle—loser's prize. "In my opinion, I still don't think this is a good idea."

But not once has Cassian betrayed his orders, even for one of his closest friends. "That's not what High Command thinks," he pulls one of the chairs out to sit on it.

From the floor, Bodhi scowls as he plays around with the deck of flimsi cards. The three Jedha-folk share the same opinion on what High Command thinks. It's a war, not a negotiation. High Command wants to use Jyn and her new connections to the upper branches of the Empire.

Cassian jerks his head towards the wall, where a window overlooking a street should be. "Is Jyn down there?"

Galen made a small mention of his life on Coruscant, though most of it was literally just about his daughter. It makes sense that the first thing Orson Krennic does after Galen's funeral is sign over that house to Galen's daughter.

"You've already seen her, haven't you?" The blind man asks.

He doesn't answer. If Chirrut could see, it's most likely that the man would be glaring at Cassian already. "Did she say anything?"

"No," Cassian replies. "But she will." He picks up his coat and puts it on, before looking at Chirrut. "Is Jyn down there?" Cassian asks again.

Chirrut shrugs. "She is." Good.

He shifts over to stare at their cards before saying. "Bodhi has the Star and the Evil One." He's already walking out of the door when he hears the pilot yell.

"That's not an okay thing to do, Cassian!" Chirrut chortles greatly from behind the door as Cassian cracks a smile. Operation Fracture was a mess, but he got three good people out of it—four, if he wanted to count things right.

He walks down the stairs of the warehouse, watching the holoimages on the wall. It's a smiling Officer Moran, hugging her brother as he holds out his holo-diploma. Past several other images are the distinct black edges of a blaster bolt.

Moran and her brother died on the Death Star. Galen died for the Death Star.

His mind fills with as many things as possible, from ridiculous songs from his childhood to poems Galen muttered to himself when he thought Cassian wasn't listening. He keeps thinking of everything while he walks through the labyrinthine streets of Coruscant. A memory crosses his minds, then a thought, and on and on.

Anything to keep his mind away from the deep fire green eyes that peek behind a thin wall of duty and shattering glass.

Memories.

Problems.

The problem that is standing in a Coruscanti doorway. Cassian is just about ready to turn away, if not for those eyes. Her eyes are Galen's. They were empty when he ran into her at the memorial, but a fire runs in them now the way they did on Jedha and on Eadu.

Her hair is loose on her back, longer and darker than his memory allows him to remember. What he sees in his mind's eyes are a thousand raindrops weaving themselves into every strand on Jyn Erso's head. A tear cascaded down her cheek and melded with the rain, a mix of his pain and hers falling together in an unending freefall.

The tension in their senses is palpable in the air: the bitterness of his dutiful actions mixed with the grief of her loss. Her eyes meet his courageously. "Cassian, why are you here?"

There are distinct dark circles around her eyes. She hasn't slept since the visit to the cemetery, with their strangely personal encounter with each other. "The Alliance needs your help." He says it straightforward and honest.

He can't risk the anger of someone without a tether to the world.

Jyn scowls but doesn't look like she's about to close the door. She pokes her head out and glance left and right, before yanking him harshly into her house and pushing him against the narrow entranceway passage.

_This is it. She's going to kill me._

"Are you _crazy_?" Jyn hisses. Even a year later, in the dry atmosphere of Coruscant, she still smells like a rainstorm over a field of millaflowers. She's standing so close to him, on her tiptoes but still she doesn't reach his height. It doesn't mean she isn't intimidating; it doesn't mean she is angered.

Her face doesn't show anger. She's bewildered; afraid. Her breathing rises ferally as her body tenses up. "They're watching me, Cassian."

Both sides of the Galactic Civil War know that. The Rebellion has been watching her since the destruction of the Death Star. And since that destruction, the Empire has learned the truth about Galen. They can't take any chance with the scientist's daughter.

Of course they're watching her. There was bound to be a catch to the comfort of Jyn's new life.

Cassian turns away slowly from her stance, towards the openness of the bright living room. "Are you safe anywhere?"

" _No_ ," she shakes her head in exasperation, "I can't talk about it, Cassian. I told you last night: I'm living my life. Everything my father's ever done is behind me."

Cassian wishes the same were true for him. "The Alliance needs your help. Put aside whatever hate you have for us, Jyn."

"This isn't about my hate against the Alliance, Cassian," she walks an unnerving pace around the furniture of the room. "The Empire has been _watching_ me since the Death Star bl—" A pale peach bolt whizzes through her words and shatters the window and the mirror on the wall. The sound is familiar to Cassian: the distinct shot of a disruptor.

Jyn's eyes widen as she recognizes the shot as well. They don't bother to search outside for the shooter. Whoever they are, they have a disruptor blaster and it is best to avoid it under all circumstances. They press their backs against the near wall. Jyn turns her head to face him. "Do you have a ship, Captain?" Her smile borders a sneer but her eyes yell _desperate_.

Cassian rolls his eyes. "It's _Major_ ," he corrects, "and of course I do."

She nods. "Meet me on the roof."—Cassian is taken aback. There's a sniper and she wants to go out in the open? Whoever is outside has stopped shooting, but he's not taking that much of a risk. His eyes scan the flat.

Jyn doesn't even tell him how to get on the roof when she runs to the hallway, most likely to her bedroom. Based on his own observation, the flat is a single-floor building. Modest and homely. But no stairs or ladders to be seen; nothing that shows a discernable way of getting to the roof.

The most logical thing to do is to escape through the broken window and climb up. He paces the hallway, looking through the timeline of the Erso family's early life. He takes out his commlink, and then he sees the ceiling and smiles.

Cassian clears the holoimages and datapads off the table as he steps on it to reach the trap door on the ceiling. He fidgets with the lock on the hatch as he comms the people in the warehouse. "Kay-Tu? Kay-Tuesso, it's Cassian."

"I thought we agreed that we're Rogue Squadron," Bodhi's voice calls out in the back.

Chirrut replies though it's covered with static, "There is no Rogue Squadron."

"Quiet," Baze comments, "It's the captain."—he rolls his eyes—"What is it, captain?"

Cassian doesn't even bother to correct them. Since his promotion after they relocated to Echo Base, they never referred to him as anything but Cassian or captain.

He sets the comm on the table so he can reach the picks in his boots and play the lock with both hands. There isn't a tamper alarm—or stars forbid, mine triggers—on, so he is free to fidget as he wishes. "Bring the ship up the roof. Get everything and go." The first three tumblers click together, and he begins to work on the third.

"Why?" Bodhi asks.

The lock clicks open and the door swings to show the sun. "Because Jyn is coming with us," he says as he picks the comm back up and pulls himself onto the roof. Cassian scans his surrounding. There is no chaos, so the neighbors haven't yet figured out that there's someone on the street with a disruptor rifle at the ready.

But he can't find the sniper. The broken window is on the eastern side, so the shooter is somewhere there. Cassian can't properly deduce the angle of the shot, and therefore the direct location of their mark. Hopefully if they shoot again, Baze will see and shoot them too.

"Affirmative, Major," K-2SO takes the comm. "We'll be there in five minutes."

He presses himself to the foot of a satellite dish for shade and cover as he waits for Jyn Erso.

**Jyn scrambles around her room** pulling drawers and pillaging through her belongings. She doesn't need to pack; she's always kept a duffel ready, as any standard runaway should. What Jyn is doing is building a scene, a setting that the Empire can draw a story upon.

She yanks the mattress out of the bed frame to reveal a small box that's collecting dust on the floor. She picks it up and opens it gingerly.

The holoimage is still there, one of many that stayed with the house when they left. It's the photo of a young Jyn and her parents. She loves it because she's frozen in the photo, stuck in a state of mid-laughter.

The only other thing in the box is her mother's pendant, where she stowed it last night. She takes the thin strap and ties it around her neck. Jyn shoves the holoimage into her duffel bag and runs.

The table in the hallways has been cleared. The trap door is open, its lock discarded on the tabletop. Cassian went through that way; and Jyn berates herself slightly for not telling him about it within the notice. She slings the bag around her torso and jumps up, catching the rim of the trap door and pulling herself up.

When she's out of her house, she can see Cassian's U-Wing on the way. No one notices the two people on the rooftop of the infamous Erso home, and no one bothers to look at the one U-Wing among a hundred other ships.

Cassian pulls the other half of her body out of the narrow opening of the hatch. Jyn turns around once, to the direction of the disruptors' shots. She can see someone on the roof, a red Zeltron girl who Jyn knows to be her neighbor.

Jyn has always known that girl as the Empire's spy. No self-respecting Zeltron girl would ever stay in her house alone so much, when there are so much more Zeltron-worthy endeavors in Coruscant. She just never expected her to be Jyn's assigned killer.

And it isn't a disruptor rifle in the red woman's hands. If the light is right and Jyn's eyes aren't playing her, Jyn is very sure it's a cannon. "Karabast," she swears.

"Come on!" Cassian yells, and Jyn realizes that the ship has just made it to them. A memory flashes under her eyes: it's Jedha. She's running the short width of the temple, running again faster and faster. Jyn is running, and a part of her wishes her house wasn't so _wide_.

She reaches for the boarding ramps and jumps, and this time she doesn't fall. There is dust shaking through her eyes, and the Death Star strikes yet again. "Close the ramp!" Jyn can hear Cassian yell. His arm grabs her and pulls her close, close enough that she can smell him: blaster oil and the flowers from the cemetery.

And beyond that, Jyn can smell smoke. And just before the hatch closes her into the light of the cabin, she looks out to the black smoke that ties itself up to the sky. Jyn sees her father's house—the house she grew up in—in flames.

She gasps and tries to reach for it, but Cassian's arms hold her down. "No!" She wails. It repeats itself over and over again.

"Jyn," Cassian whispers against her hair. "Jyn, it's gone. You can't do anything anymore. It's gone." He keeps her there until the door closed on her memories—all the memories of a life before the Empire stole it and the Alliance destroyed it. Everything in that building, all the survivors of her private war before Lah'mu, are all in flames.

The flames she allowed to ignite. They caught up with her and burned the first home she's ever had in a while.

It isn't the Empire's fault; or the Alliance's.

It's Jyn's.


	10. Peaceful, Silent and Free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **The Missing Year**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I snuck in an OC, who actually showed up for a moment back in chapter 5. Hope y'all don't mind.

**53 HOURS**

" **General," Weems called**. **"A comm from the** Coruscant cell." The private paused for a while. "It's Moran." Moran, who had just left for Coruscant four days prior to continue as the Imperial contact of Operation Fracture. He was expecting a comm from her any time soon.

Draven nodded and followed the man to the communications tower. The hologram of Officer Celes Moran was frowning at him. He was ready to berate for risking sending a holocom. "What are y—"

"Jyn Erso just arrived on Coruscant," the spy told him. "On an Imperial shuttle, with a squad of Death Troopers and Director Orson Krennic of Weapons Research."

He was taken aback. He hadn't heard of the younger Erso for five days since she skipped out of Base One. Draven was expecting Captain Andor only days earlier to retrieve the girl and Bodhi Rook. "Is Captain Andor there?"

The sapphire hologram shook its head. "No. I was calling to ask if he was _there_." The usual vindication in her voice wasn't there. "There's a new development on Fracture that I overheard past their transport."

His eyebrow rose, curious.

"Galen Erso is dead," Moran informed him in an unrushed tone. "According to the latest news docs, assassinated by rebels." She was no doubt telling the truth. Draven hired Moran in Intelligence for her uncanny ability of finding out the truth—by any means necessary.

He didn't approve of her methods, but they almost always got the best results.

Interrogators needed that ability to fish out lies. Armed with a knife or with worse, Celes Moran could do just that. Draven didn't need confirmation from her any more than he needed it from Andor. "Copy, Officer Moran. You may—"

"Sir, I believe another course of action can be taken," she interrupted. Draven wasn't fond of it, but he was sure to be used to it. "The inner circle is aware that Galen Erso was a spy. Director Krennic is volunteering to check on the Death Star plans himself. They're going to Scarif, sir."

Draven was going to reprimand the woman, but instead he smiled. "That's the kind of information I wanted to hear, Moran."

"Thank you, General," Moran nodded. "I suggest that the Citadel be destroyed. It's too guarded for an undercover extraction, and more so if Krennic is on the facility. It contains more plans than there are spies to sabotage them. It's the smartest road to take."

"One day, Moran," he threatened, "Your blatant lack of respect for the Rebel authority will get you in trouble."

She shrugged. "I'm turning twenty-nine any time soon, General; and I've been with the Alliance for longer than half of that. If I was going to get in trouble, it would have happened already."

"We'll see about sending someone to Scarif," Draven confirmed. "Dismissed." With that, the hologram died. He nodded to Weems and exited. All he was to do now was wait for Andor and his crew to return; they had something new to do.

**38 HOURS**

**Krennic gazed at the pristine white** walls as if they didn't remind him of bloodstains and rain. Jyn Erso followed him closely. She was still dressed in her black overcoat, because she was mourning and because she could. Krennic had the luxury of a dazzling white uniform, one that couldn't allow him to properly lament.

They walked by an unnecessarily large window, but Krennic understood the need for flair. It showed the wondrous paradise of Scarif beneath them, with its sapphire blue oceans and its desert gold beaches. The warm temperature of the planet was cruel against Jyn Erso's black garb, no doubt.

"The Vault is this way, Miss Erso," he told her as she began to drift through the hallways. She did it often, in the days after Eadu. Jyn Erso was smoke, any more than her father was. Drifting and passing through everything: the child of her mother's fire.

Jyn nodded lethargically and returned to the line. They were on Scarif for one reason: to find the depth of her father's treachery. Several talks with Imperial officers and licensed interrogators alike had only established that she knew nothing about Galen.

People passed by them in the corridor. Some paid glances to them, but most simply passed through them. "This is the heart of Imperial Weapons Research," Krennic informed her. "In the Citadel are the brainchildren of the greatest minds of the Empire."

"Even if they're traitors?" Her voice follows him down the white corridor. His face grimaces at the mention of the word. It wasn't synonymous to Galen yet, but it was on its way.

Krennic didn't turn around to face her. "No matter his allegiances, your father was a brilliant man," Krennic whispered. The truth of Eadu would never go out to the galactic public. Even simple enforcer droids were not to hear the story. "That depends on the degree of treachery," he covered it up.

There was only silence for a while and the echoing thrums of their footsteps. "It is a shame the Alliance mistook your father's brilliance for a weapon." It was the lie that had to be told. Galen Erso was assassinated by rebels in the hope of preventing the superweapon from development.

Jyn Erso nodded. "They will get what they deserve." The hard set of her eyes was no longer languid. She was truly and duly angry at the Rebel Alliance, for reasons unknown to Krennic. If he had to guess, perhaps the root of her resentment was that the Alliance had somehow crept into Galen's resolve—which eventually led to his death.

Krennic refused to name it as an execution.

When they arrived at the circular door, he passed a look to the black-clad young woman. "It would be best that I go this way alone, Miss Erso." She didn't answer, but the way her eyes—Galen's eyes—passed over his told him that she heard and acknowledged what he said.

Jyn Erso stood erect at the side of the hallway, her posture flawless and her face unreadable. He pressed his hand onto the scanner at the side and listened to the vacuum within the schematic bank open.

Without a word from her or the KX droid that followed him, Orson Krennic entered the data vault. He didn't properly recall the name of the data tape, but he had committed its location to memory.

He began to move the levers as KD-17 moved to the console board. The metal shifted around the spire in a dizzying motion. "Locating _Star-dust_ ," the droid said as a data tape glowed green. Krennic found irony in its naming, its capability of resolving planets into nothing more than that.

Perhaps it meant more to Galen than Krennic could find meaning for.

Krennic moved the handles around the six-story tower. Within in were more plans than any one could see to: scientific treasuries, bureaucratic memoranda and schematics highlighted to microscopic detail. He was there for only one. It was an agonizingly slow pace watching the metal hands pull out the data tape with utmost care, until Jyn Erso ran into the room.

She was alive, to say the least. Her eyes were as wild as Galen's were on that afternoon, pleading for the lives of his engineers—who in turn died as well. While the retrieval mechanism took its sweet time bringing the Death Star plans down, Galen turned around and took to the center room.

"There are Rebels," she said. "In the facility." Her eyes had seen them. The Rebels were here for the plans, which meant that Galen had in fact done something with the project. Krennic needed to know _what_.

KD-17 looked up from the console and the whirring in the data vault stopped. "Director, it would be best that you and Miss Erso vacate the facility if there is risk of a security breach." Its eyes blinked an indiscernible pattern. "We will have the plans transmitted to your transport upon your departure."

Rebels were a curious bunch, capable of being either so restrained or incredibly violent. Despite everything, Krennic still valued his own life above the Death Star's. He nodded to the droid and began to march down the white walls of the Citadel.

 **Cassian was not fond of the navy** gray uniform, but still he donned it with duty. He was a Fulcrum, able to bend to whichever side of the battlefield with a shift of his weight. But he was not here as a spy. Cassian Andor was here as a Rebel, wholly and entirely.

In the corner, he played with the wires of the detonator that he had attached to the wall. All the bombs were set to a timer, K-2SO having calculated the elapsed time between each activation. They needed to get out of the planet within the hour, and once they would be—the entire data vault would blow.

Cassian was still skeptic to the orders to destroy the schematics bank. If the Tantive IV and the Death Star plans would never arrive at Base One, it would only be logical that they take the Empire's copy of the plans.

But Cassian would never disobey his orders; Eadu had proven that. General Draven told him to destroy the bank, entirely, and he would do just that.

Once the light of the bomb had glowed an active red, he and K-2SO retreated from the corner to find another one. The droid was carrying a box of explosives under the guise of something less precarious. And the Alliance didn't have the funding for decent bombs.

If K-2SO so much as placed the box on the wrong side of its weight, things would go very, _very_ wrong. And Cassian was ready to swear to the stars above when the droid set the box down to point forward, and swear even louder when he looked at the direction.

It had been two days since Eadu. Cassian had just arrived on Yavin 4 when General Draven briefed him on a new, much simpler, mission: _Get to Scarif. Destroy the Citadel._ Cassian wasn't given any specific methods, but the subtle way Draven had people march in and out of the hangar with boxes of detonators told him exactly how the general wanted it done.

Jyn Erso was on the Citadel, still her hair down and dressed in black; and Cassian Andor was about to blow the place up.

He'd let Galen die, and it was in his mind whenever he closed his eyes. Cassian wasn't sure what he was more afraid of: what he was about to do to Jyn Erso, or what she could do to him in his nightmares—once she was dead and among the ashes of Scarif.

"Jyn Erso is in the facility," K-2SO said as they watched her from the hallway. At the whisper of her own name, she turned her head to the side and looked at them. Initially, her eyes widened, then they settled into a narrow glare.

Cassian's posture stiffened. "I am aware, Kay-Tuesso. I am aware." The droid picked up the box of detonators carefully and proceeded to walk. Towards the girl or not, Cassian was unsure. He only watched Jyn Erso's eyes follow them.

Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded and walked into a chamber—the data vault. (Kriff, this mission would have been so much easier if Jyn Erso didn't hate the Alliance.) "There is a distinct possibility that Jyn Erso will warn the Empire of our presence here at Scarif."

"I know." They snuck into another corner as K-2SO took his leisure time setting the box down. Cassian hoped that perhaps the droid also didn't feel righteous ending the Erso family line. Then again, there was a time limit and a few more bombs to place. (Seven seemed like overkill, but they had to be thorough.)

The continuing minutes seemed faster soon later. They wired all the bombs into hidden alcoves, and even one underneath a mess hall table. Along with their steady pace of justified terrorism, the angular degree of the shadows on the beach increased ever so slightly. K-2SO had forgone the empty box after wiring the final detonator. Lugging boxes around tended to slow his pace of escape.

They made their way back to their landing pad. The chrono on his wrist clicked down to almost only ten minutes left. Still, despite that limit, Cassian only stood at the boarding ramp's opening and watched the tropical landscape of Scarif. K-2SO continued on past the bulkhead.

He watched from the ramp as Jyn Erso ran down the field, her black coat billowing behind her like Krennic's white cape. The ocean breeze blew her hair behind her as the minutes ticked away from their mutual destruction.

"Cassian," K-2SO called from the cockpit. "We should get out of here before there is no _here_ to get out of."

He raised a hand as a silencing gesture, but then realized that K-2SO couldn't actually see him. " _Wait_ ," he commanded. Before Jyn could step into her transport, her eyes scanned the field once before finding Cassian's. She didn't say anything, but the empty space between them would have made it impossible to hear anyway.

He waited as Jyn Erso stepped into her transport and flew up into the stars. Then he retreated to the cockpit, three minutes to spare.

K-2SO was watching from the viewport. "It appears Jyn Erso will be able to live another day." The droid commented.

"Seems like it," Cassian added before taking his seat on the captain's chair. "Start up the ship. We need to get out in"—he looked at the timer—"two minutes."

K-2SO did not comment about how they would have had more had Cassian not wanted to watch Jyn Erso escape to safety before them. The droid took to the controls and the ship began to rumble below them. The engines fired up and shuttle began its ascent.

"Fifteen seconds," Cassian said, "Then we go into hyperspace." And so the spacecraft went up and up until the last second, just as he was about to activate the hyperdrive—the entire facility erupted in sand. No fire, only debris.

So many lives, for the greater good. But Cassian had grown used to it. _How many people have you shot, Andor?_ Celes Moran once asked him. Sixteen at the time, and still the number was high.

Cassian was only glad that Jyn Erso was not in the body count.

**14 HOURS**

**They didn't bother being gentle with** her. The stormtroopers kicked her into the barren room for one more time. "Watch it, target practice!" Celes yelled to them. But she didn't fight, because she knew what they could do.

They let her wander because they knew she wasn't going anywhere.

They had her brother; she wasn't going anywhere.

"Celes?" It's Elohim, a fellow rebel. He must have been aboard the Tantive IV—which they captured only days ago.

 _Make him talk_. The squad leader told her. _Or your brother dies._ Celes closed her eyes to steel her resolve. "Elohim," she greeted her senior.

He sat idly on a chair. There was a table in front of him. A lacking presence of knives and weapons allowed dust and other particles to settle on the table. She wasn't used to the lack, but she banished the thought. She volunteered to be on Coruscant to get away from that side of her.

"How are you here?" Elohim asked her. She knew why he's there. Celes overheard the Imperials. They captured the Tantive IV; and Elohim was part of the Rebel Escort. "Were you discovered on Coruscant?"

Celes nodded. "Yes." Freyan accepted a job offer from a medic whose side job was to leech Rebel spies out to the Empire. She got the brunt of the blow. "But right now, I'm here for another reason."

He gave her a quizzical look. "What was that?"

"Draven's precious cargo," Celes said, but the words are hard to choke out. "They want to know where it is." _Operation Fracture Oversight. The Death Star plans._

Elohim was taken aback but she didn't blame him for being so. "Moran." The set of his jaw told Celes that she struck a nerve. " _No_."

"Elohim, please," she pleaded. "You know what I'm talking about. They have my brother, and they'll kill him if you don't help me now."

His eyes told her everything she needed to know. "They're lost." Celes was an interrogator. She knew when people are lying. "Why are you so ready to betray the Rebellion?"

"If you won't try to help me, try to help yourself," she threatened, "You know what I did for the Rebellion. If you don't help yourself now, the next time they let me into this room"—she gestures to the empty tabletop—"It won't be to talk."

She'd done it already, to the first two from the Tantive IV's crew. They refused to talk, and refused to break under Celes' regretful hand. It was the first time she ever drew a rebel's blood, but she didn't kill them. The first, the Stormtroopers shot thrice.

The second, they threw out of the airlock.

The squad leader told her that that was how her brother was going to die. Shot or thrown out an airlock, or whatever punishment Elohim garnered for the loyalty she can't mirror.

"Then it will be for the Rebellion," he spit at her, "The cause _you_ have once believed in, and now have forsaken."

Celes couldn't quell her anger, and grabbed her former commanding officer by the collar. "I am a _slave_ to Rebellion. My father sold me to the Rebellion to pay for his debts. The only thing I will ever fight for is my brother."

Elohim smiled ruefully. "Then your brother is dead."

She was readying to deck him, until the director walked in. She calmed out immediately. This was the man who could get her brother executed whether she cooperated or not—well, him and the lord of the Sith cult who also happened to be aboard.

"That's enough, Miss Moran," the Krennic's voice came to. "It appears you have been…incompetent." Celes inhaled sharply as her fingers loosened over Elohim's collar.

"You and…" The director thought momentarily, "…this man will be transported over to the Death Star along with me." A pair of stormtroopers followed the director into the room with a pair of restraints, for Elohim.

Celes nodded. "And my brother?"

He smiled poisonously, "Oh yes, I almost forgot." Krennic titled his head to look at the troopers who had just shackled Elohim. "Kill the boy." The faceless stormtrooper nodded and exited the room.

"No!" Every muscle in Celes' body jumped into a new rush of adrenaline. The frustration she had saved for Elohim's face was going to be directed to Orson Krennic. She was about to lunge, when the other trooper grabbed her and placed a new set of shackles on her. Celes settled for a yell. "No! We had a deal!"

They ushered them out, the director walking closely in front of them. "Afraid so, Miss Moran. You were incapable of providing what we asked you. We are only upholding our end of the agreement."

There was even more cruelty in her handling than there was earlier. The director was headed out for the hangar, and he was taking them with him. Which meant, first and foremost, that Celes wasn't even going to be allowed with her brother in his final moments—because she _failed_.

"Where are you taking me then?" She spit.

Krennic didn't deign to look back at her. "I said it earlier, which only proves you have no idea how to listen. I'm taking you aboard the Death Star."

The Death Star. Fracture. The Alliance.

There was the sound of a blaster down the hallway behind her, and she flinched and tried not to let it affect her. It could be any shot. Maybe the crew of the Tantive IV was running an escape; maybe the rebels had snuck in to rescue them. Anything, if not the bolt that killed her brother. "Why?"

"Because some of your rebel friends have led us right to your base," Krennic looked at her and smiled. They couldn't… Any rebel wouldn't be so stupid. "Yavin 4, right?" Next to her, Elohim twitched nervously. "Yes, well, you are about to witness the end of the rebellion you so willingly betrayed."

Betrayed, maybe, but she could still make it right. If they continued to let her wander—because their ego and pride have led them to believe that she was hopeless, desperate yet strangely enduring—Celes could find the comm room and she could send a warning to the Alliance.

**0 HOURS**

" **He wants to fight," Chirrut assessed** the captain. Yet here they were on Hoth, a proper place for a blind man who could not see anything much less color.

Bodhi's laugh ringed at the comm. "You're not in the Fleet, Cass," the pilot said. They could hear the firefight going on at the orbit of Yavin. Cassian's hand twitched on the console.

Chirrut moved his own to the young man's shoulder. "The Alliance still needs you, captain. You shouldn't be on the lines today."

"I don't appreciate being called expendable," Bodhi called. Then, still clear but directed at someone else, "Copy, Blue Leader." The pilot paused for a while. "Apparently, the use of this channel is unauthorized, but the general is going to turn a blind eye just this once. See you when we win the war."

Cassian added, "It better not be in a body bag, Rook." The line returned to static before Bodhi could reply. The captain weakly slapped the comm then stalked out of the room.

"Let's see if we can find a warmer corner here in Hoth," he laughed to himself, but Chirrut was very sure he could hear it.

Baze grunted and poked Chirrut's shoulder. "And you?"

He shrugged. "I would like to stay here. You go with the captain and explore." Baze made no sound and only nodded and took a seat.

"I will stay too," Baze told him. He nodded and began to pray: _I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me._

And on Coruscant, Jyn Erso too saw sitting down and watching. She counted every ship that passed by until she lost count, and then she returned to one and started again. With every count, she rolled her fingers around the pendant at her neck.

The constant drone of the teacher reminded her of Chirrut's praying, but she preferred the latter. Jyn had covered all this is in a previous life, but she wasn't going to disclose that to anyone else but her father—and her father was dead.

And suddenly there was a Togruta at the door, a girl barely past her teenage years who was known as Krennic's secretary's assistant. Jyn's attention whipped from the passing ships to Dewi Marek. "Excuse me," Dewi said. Her voice was needlessly high-pitched and grating on Jyn's ears. "May I… um, Jyn Erso?"

The Cathar professor's eyes landed straight on Jyn. Despite having only been (re-)enrolled to the Coruscant University just days ago, the people were familiar with her and her face. It was the consequence being the daughter of the supposedly assassinated Imperial science officer. "Miss Erso?"

She nodded and followed the younger girl into the corridor. "What is it?" She asked.

"News from the Death Star," Dewi said, before pausing then taking an oddly deep breath as Jyn looked at her quizzically. "There is no Death Star." It's a set of words she said so fast, but Jyn comprehends it in its entirety.

The Death Star was gone. Her father could be at peace, maybe, hopefully. And Saw, too, would never find need setting her ablaze ever again.

 _Save the rebellion_ , Saw told her, echoing it again and again in the darkness.

Jyn could feel her father's last touch glide over her cheeks like warms tears. _Someone must destroy it_.

Her mouth twitched to hide the expression rolling into her face. "Thank you, Dewi."

The Death Star had been destroyed, along with Orson Krennic. The Alliance had destroyed her father's monster—both his own creation and the one who chased and baited and took him away. Beneath that, Jyn couldn't help but smile.

The rain became visible from the window, until there was nothing else but the sound of tears on the roof above her. It was a strange feeling, knowing the terror that had passed in the days it had been since the rain was this soft.

And she realized, she wasn't really angry. Not anymore. She was just empty now. The sky was pouring out everything, dousing the embers that had sifted since Jedha and beyond. Washing away everything until she was truly empty, ready to start a new.

Perhaps the blood would never be cleaned from her hands, and the pain would never be stripped from her heart—but the tears were being wiped from her eyes. Dewi nodded and left down the corridor so that Jyn could only stand there.

Listening to the cries of the ghosts in her mind being drowned out by the sound of rain, as Jyn hoped that one day they would their peace in silence.

And that she would find her own somewhere else.

Her father's monster was gone. Someone had destroyed it, and Saw's dream had been saved. The sound of their echoing voices was faint in her ears.

With everything that had happened, there would never be silence, but there would be peace.

**NOW**

And eventually, Jyn realizes there can never really be peace. She can't be happy alone with only the voices of the dead to tear her apart.

She can't find peace in silence or in flame, there in the threatening embrace of Cassian Andor's arms, which Jyn has deemed as nothing short of a restraint.

This is the price she paid for honoring Galen Erso and Saw Gerrera. It's her house, and she is only on the way of building it into a home, and it is burning.

_Save the rebellion! Save the dream!_

There is no peace in Saw's dream. There is no peace in hers.

But Jyn allows herself this moment, before her cage lets her go free. Her hands huddle to her chest, and she tries to count the passing ships like she does when the world becomes dark.

Because when she closes her eyes, it is no longer the thunder of the stormtroopers but the rumble of an elevator. It is the resonant explosion of Scarif; and Cassian's silent warning and Saw's, telling her to run.

Maybe he saved her life that day, and maybe it was his guilt over her father. But Jyn lets him hold her there as if he has never done anything wrong.

 _Then_ she pushes him harshly from around her. Once he's done stumbling, Jyn folds her arms around her chest. "So I'm with the Rebellion again, I guess. It still doesn't mean I'm a part of it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Kudos and Comment!_


	11. His Dream or Hers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **In Memoriam Ad Maiorem**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just noting that I made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/ignite.the.stars/playlist/50qXZzYs9Ejh8bwMMZQfGN) for this story—though some of the songs have nothing to do with the story and just have the kind of beat built for the tone. But in this chapter, try _Alice_

**Cassian is right about everything he** told her in the cemetery earlier that night. She looks better; better than ever. The year she's lived has a loneliness comparable to the three on Lah'mu. Jyn can say she can sleep at night, but she can't. But Jyn can still stand calm, even if everything she's lived for is gone.

Her secret? She knew where she was going. She knew that her last would be over, and that there would be no loneliness once it was.

But that is what she knew. Jyn's eyes scan the cabin of the ship. She is not surprised to see Bodhi there. Like her, he appears to look better than before. Then again, the man had gone through Saw's own form of psychological torture so anything after then will have been labeled "better."

She is on this particular U-Wing, though it appears to have gone through a repair job. She backtracks to moments ago, when the ship was flying through air traffic. The Imperial logo on the side is gone, just as she had purged some of her clothes of the mark.

Jyn is only glad they didn't decide to paint the Alliance's symbol on it. Even just saying the name led her murderous neighbor to aim a blaster at her head. "So I'm with the Rebellion again, I guess," she crosses her arms around her chest. "It still doesn't mean I'm a part of it." She will not make the same mistake as her father.

"I didn't ask you to come with us," Cassian struggles to get a foothold. Surprisingly, Chirrut and Baze are still there —there being _the Alliance_ and not just this particular U-Wing vehicle. The blind man grabs Cassian by the shoulders to aid in steadying him.

Jyn bobs her head in a mocking laugh. "My house blew up, Cassian. Do tell me where else I'm actually going to go."

Bodhi comes to her question. "This was just an Intelligence mission. Your house getting blown up wasn't exactly in the plan."

"And neither was bringing you aboard," K-2SO adds. "Though both events appear to be mutually non-exclusive."

Cassian shrugs. "I had to improvise." His breathing is racked with adrenaline. Jyn counts his inhales and exhales along with the passing of ships. To break the silence, Chirrut laughs.

Jyn thinks it's a joke as well. "Intelligence?" she questions, "You're looking at the wrong places."

Chirrut drops the humor in his face. She is immediately taken aback. "You mean to tell us you're _not_ an Imperial favorite?"

She's a bit offended at the light-hearted jest. But they're right. "Not saying that I'm not," Jyn denies, "But after everything with my father, do you really think they trust me with anything?"

"You just got an invitation to join the Fleet," Cassian tells her. " _Again_. Just a few days ago." Again equates to _third time_. Jyn knows why the Empire keeps doing that.

Because they want to keep her closer and be able to watch her. The Empire wants her locked on a Star Destroyer in between star systems, so they can throw her out the airlock if she does something they don't like.

Jyn exhales. "And I said no. I can't know anything if I'm not in a position to _know_ anything to begin with."

"Wonderful," K-2SO says in a snide remark. He turns around to head for the cockpit. "Well, I will set the course for Hoth."

"Hoth?" She is more or less surprised. Hoth is an ice wasteland. (Then again, Fest is an ice wasteland too, and Cassian is from there.)

Cassian sneers, though it doesn't look to be directed at her. "Well, her majesty Princess Leia had her ship tracked and led the Empire all the way to Yavin 4." Jyn knows. She just didn't expect the Alliance to relocate to a place like Hoth.

Then she realizes that that is _exactly_ why the Alliance relocated there. The fact that Jyn, who is knowledgeable of three suits of galactic warfare as Imperial, Rebel and Partisan, can't expect the base to be there, then much less the egotistic Empire. It's the least likely candidate, and that makes it the best one.

Bodhi leans in Jyn's ear and whispers. "The captain still isn't too happy about what happened, but he and the princess are good friends now."

"Major," Cassian hides in a cough. Jyn smiles. Clearly she isn't the only one stuck to calling him captain. _Major Andor_ doesn't have the same ring to it, plus it gets on his nerves. He clears his throat from the faux cough. "And since you're here anyway, _I_ need to make a comm to Echo Base."

He turns away to the comm units. As soon as Cassian has his back turned, Bodhi attacks Jyn with a hug. "It's great to see you again though," the pilot says as he squeezes the life out of her.

Jyn can't say she's missed any of them, but she doesn't feel any more discomfort in the company of these three men. After all, she's only known them a few days before they disappeared from her life for a year. But she feels close to them, the way one would be with a childhood friend they haven't spoken to through their teenage years.

They pull her down onto the floor of the cabin, which is cold and constantly vibrating but surprisingly comfortable if she positions herself well enough. She doesn't blame them for choosing the floor over the hard seats.

Baze ruffles her hair to a state almost as wild as his, and there is a smile on his face. Chirrut smiles at her, "I always knew out paths would cross again, Jyn Erso."

They must have crossed before. She thinks back, to any time when the people on the streets of Coruscant would bump her, whisper apologies then turn away. Jyn never saw any of their faces, and it could be them. Cassian has established full well that they have been watching her almost as long as the Empire has.

"We're heading out into hyperspace," K-2SO escapes from the cockpit. As he says it, the ship lurches through alarming speed past the air traffic of Coruscant, then up and up and up. Jyn thinks the droid is about to turn around and return to being the copilot. In her experience, most experienced flyers actually do need a right hand.

Instead, the droid approaches her. Bodhi clears the way immediately. In K-2's steel fingers are stacks of holorecords and datapads, not unlike those she buries her mind in back on Coruscant. He hovers over her then drops them all on her lap. "These are the transmissions and files Galen Erso sent during his service to the Alliance." It's a sudden weight on Jyn. "We have no use for them anymore."

She should probably scowl at his comment but instead she looks up at the droid then stands. Standing doesn't actually change the angle of her gaze either way. "Thanks, Kay-Tu."

He doesn't respond, and instead just turns around back through the bulkhead. " _So_ ," Bodhi nudges her with his shoulder, "How's your hand at sabacc?"

Jyn smirks. "Hit me."

The four of them shuffle around into a circle through an awkward shifting of bent legs and inchworm crawls. Once their positions at least resemble a circle, Bodhi starts to deal the cards.

She takes the first two in her hand, "You do this often at Hoth?"

"Cold planet," Baze laughs then shakes his head. "We don't play on Hoth. We've been escaping to Bespin as many times as we can." Jyn rearranges her cards. They're bad, for now. They always are at the beginning.

"I'm the pilot," Bodhi smiles cheekily. The game keeps going, flimsi cards passed in and out of the deck and onto their hands or their discards. Jyn grazes her finger along them, feeling the imprinted Aurebesh labels on the edges. They're for Chirrut's convenience no doubt.

"I take it the captain doesn't join you," she laughs. Cassian has never seemed like the type to disobey rules, and suddenly an image of Eadu pops up. Jyn is quick to choke it away.

Chirrut cracks a smile. "I suggest you be careful. The _captain_ can hear you," his head directs to the cockpit.

"He's a Major now." Bodhi drops a winning hand. They wait a moment for Chirrut to feel the cards. "But yeah, he doesn't go with us to Cloud City."

"But he does turn a blind eye," Chirrut jokes before gesturing at the cards at the center of their circle. "He's been busy since… well, since Eadu. Keeps on volunteering for missions, even just escorts or Intelligence."

"Of course, he tried to refuse when Mon Mothma had us spy on you, but she wouldn't have it," Bodhi informs. "Cassian's been tossing himself into more and more jobs after Galen died, except for that one."

At times like this, Jyn forgets that Bodhi was also close with her father. She also forgets that maybe they're all orphans on this ship. The only difference is that they've had each other. All Jyn has been is alone.

She tosses her cards down. "Another round?"

"That was just a trial," the blind man tells her. "Because Bodhi was the one who won." To this, the pilot coughs and displays a look of offense. "Real sabacc includes bets," he continues. He takes the pile of cards from the center of the deck and shuffles them. "So what'll it be, Miss Erso?"

 **Even if they're ready to go front** and into hyperspace, the congested airways of the Coruscant atmosphere slow them slightly. K-2SO returns to the cockpit just as the world goes white through light speed. "I've given her the data," the droid says, "But I still don't see why it is relevant."

Cassian shakes his head. "I didn't think you would, Kay-Tu."

There are several things Cassian has done that K-2 hasn't deemed relevant. Strangely, they're also the kinder of his deeds. The droid is always the more practical one in any duo.

He kept all the data tapes, originally because of mission formality. When Fracture ended, Cassian still kept them. Because he wanted to give them to Jyn.

K-2SO once asked why Cassian wanted to give Jyn those records.

For Cassian, the answer is simple.

He wanted to give them to her because Galen is hers more than he is anyone else's. Because he is Galen's friend; and she is Galen's daughter. Jyn Erso has lost the very things that Cassian has never really had.

Beyond everything, Jyn Erso is broken and so is he. But perhaps, he is not yet broken enough that he cannot pull himself into some semblance of a man who can still make right by everything he's done. She is not broken enough to pull herself apart at the memory of Galen and the others who died by the Death Star.

They drop out of hyperspace, and the world goes black. Between Cassian and Jyn is empty space and dark water; a silence Cassian can't cross. He can't walk the line between the finality she deserves and the violence the Rebellions demands.

Cassian still remembers the yells of the Imperial bridge officer, even ten years later.

_Celes Moran walked the hallways of Yavin 4 with that man's blood staining her hands. Cassian glared at the older girl as she passed._

_There, she paused and played into a scornful laugh. "You and I have done worse things for this rebellion, Andor." Her smile became rueful. "Whether we wanted to or not."_

That hallway encounter with the late Officer Moran taught Cassian one thing: how to pull the trigger.

Cassian never had to close his eyes, never had to hesitate. It was for the Rebellion. _His_ rebellion. Whether he wanted to or not.

_How many people have you shot now, Andor?_

Actually, Galen never cared about that body count. Galen did not ask questions. (And neither did Cassian, but the man often spoke of his family and Cassian often listened to the stories.) Galen Erso did not forgive, but he did not ignore either.

There is a side of Cassian Andor that believes he does not deserve Galen Erso's absolution, just as he does not deserve Jyn Erso's forgiveness. He deserves nothing more than his Rebellion, the one he's lived for and killed for.

His rebellion is not Jyn's rebellion. After everything that's happened to her, she deserves better.

"Approaching Hoth," K-2SO says.

The Baze is there in the cockpit, and Cassian was too lost in his thoughts to notice. "Captain," he calls with his gruff voice.

He hums and turns around on the pilot's chair.

"I would like to borrow your coat." It's a strange request, but Cassian has learned never to question anything if a Jedha native says it.

Instead, he battles with logic. "I don't think it'll fit you."

Baze grunts but doesn't appear to try and do anything else. He's only standing there.

"It's in my bag," Cassian rolls his eyes.

He gives a brief thanks then disappears. The rise in temperature doesn't happen on Hoth as it does on Yavin 4. The ice planet is as cold—if not colder—than hyperspace itself.

As soon as he feels like they're grounded again, Cassian returns to the back to see Bodhi packing up his cards. He catches blips of their conversation.

"Anyway," Bodhi says to Jyn, "if you're staying awhile."—("Bodhi, my home just blew up. Where am I going?" Jyn replies.)—"Well, we're going to Cloud City again by the week's end."

Ah, another one of Bodhi's infamous Bespin trips. Cassian likes to pretend they're a secret, but almost the entire staff at Echo Base is familiar with the protocol. They even drew up together to get Bodhi a personalized set of sabacc cards for his name day earlier that year, so that even Baze and Chirrut could play.

He scans the cabin more, and then he sees Jyn in his parka. His gaze drops to her bag, which she must have packed in record time. Of course she wouldn't bring a coat ready for Hoth. (No one can _actually_ be ready for Hoth.)

It's big on her, to say the least. It makes Jyn look smaller more than she already is. Baze is standing over her smoothing out creases while Bodhi looks to be suppressing a giggle. "Just wear it," the man says, "I'm getting cold just looking at you."

Cassian decides to just look at Baze, eyebrows raised. "It's Hoth," is the assassin's only excuse. "You have more than one." Well, he does have an extra coat—for the accidental recruits he sometimes comes back with.

"Anyway," Bodhi somehow manages to sound even more awkward than he already is, "We'll be going." He and the Guardians of the Whills escape the boarding ramp quickly, letting the bitter chill of Hoth into the relatively warm cabin. "Remember, just four days, then we'll see about sending you to Demesel."

Demesel is a kind and small planet nothing short of a sector away from Yavin 4, in other words the direct complement of Hoth's location. It's a great place to go into hiding, which is the agreement Jyn must have struck with them if she follows through with joining them on their Cloud City excursion.

Jyn is glaring out the boarding ramp at the three of them. Clearly, the suggestion of a four-day wait did not come from her, or maybe even more. "I did not lose a sabacc game for this," she mutters.

Cassian wants to hear the story for that.

She rolls her eyes before forcing them to meet with Cassian's. Then she pulls the blaster from somewhere under his not-really-that-big coat. He tries to reach for his own sidearm, but for some reason it's already in K-2's.

"I'm not going to shoot him, Kay," Jyn says as she holds the blaster by the wrong end and outstretching her arm towards Cassian. Then she shrugs, "You left this on Yavin 4"—the gun hovers aimlessly between them by her dangling arm—"and Eadu, and Scarif."

It's the same gun she held over him only earlier that night. Cassian feels like he should have recognized it then, and it is another string on his list of miniscule failures. He shakes his head. "Keep it."

Jyn shrugs and puts the blaster in his hand anyway and says, "The last time someone told me that, they died." She tugs at the collar of his blue parka and turns around for the open boarding ramp. "Let's hope my luck hasn't changed."

Kay-Tu follows after her, leaving Cassian to stare at the same old blaster that had met a million beating hearts. This gun should never have been in the hands of Jyn Erso. This gun is a memoir of her father and the Rebellion and everything that isn't hers anymore.

**["Unpublished Reflections on Galen Erso," FROM THE PERSONAL FILES OF MON MOTHMA:]**

> _It is of my greatest regret to have only met Galen Erso once, and that our following correspondence had been limited to transmissions that were not even addressed to me personally. You may find more of a weary ex-senator in all this than you will Galen Erso, or perhaps even his daughter._
> 
> _I realized Galen Erso was important, thirteen years ago, in what resulted to be the infamous Lah'mu mission. Ten years ago, I realized he was important again. My luxury of a single meeting with Galen came after having him kidnapped from an Imperial shuttle and brought to Yavin 4. To claim that I knew him well would be an insult to the brilliant scientist the Alliance had failed twice over. Exempli gratia, our sole encounter—I told him his daughter was dead._

Krennic looks over the small crowd in front of him, seas of black that don't make waves or currents. The people most likely to attend this are already dead. He clears his throat, "Galen Erso is,"—he catches himself—", _was_ an old friend of mine." Krennic releases a nervous laugh and returns to the script he'd made prior to this event, which has been carefully laid out in his mind. "Isn't it strange that _is_ eventually comes to past tense? The past is the past, but the present can never be the past."

> _Against my own knowledge and the Rebel Alliance's intelligence, his daughter was not really dead, but then it didn't matter. It was a lie that we did not realize. Galen Erso volunteered for the Alliance after learning of that lie. His legacy, the future of this rebellion, is based on a lie we never knew we told. Though I believe, lie or not, Galen would have fought for us anyway. For the injustice in the galaxy._

"But this thing of the past will continue through the present and the future," Krennic addresses, "That Galen is, was, and always will be a brilliant man. The people who killed him mistook that brilliance for folly." Krennic knows deep down that perhaps Galen was both brilliant and foolish. For now, he would like to remember his friend, not the traitor. Krennic scans the mourners and finds Jyn Erso, who is still watching angrily. But then Krennic realizes she isn't watching him, but beyond that to the carved marble by Galen's name: Lyra Erso.

> _But even that assumption is a lie. No, Galen Erso would fight for his daughter. He fought alongside the Alliance, for her memory. If then, we had known, I have no doubts that Galen Erso would still fight—for the future of his daughter. Even in our single yet pivoting meeting, he had exuded an air of humility and a thirst for righteousness. I saw the same thirst in Jyn Erso._

"I know Galen's daughter is here, and I am not among that family, but Galen was like a brother to me," Krennic says, "I met him in the days of the Old Republic, a brilliant colleague with hardened eyes of a man who has seen the world, learned and returned to what he already had. I cannot see those eyes, as they close where he is now in peace, but I do see them in his daughter's eyes."

> _Our shortcomings in the case of Galen are nothing compared to the failures we have made by Jyn Erso, because we have failed her in a hundred different ways: failed by our cause, failed by the extremists she tried to believe in, and most of all, failed by our inability to save her father and her mother. I looked at Jyn Erso and saw the child of those failures, an anger that will consume more and never be quenched. I looked at Jyn Erso and saw a desire to find a place that will not fail her._

"I do not believe in a higher power, I digress. But I do believe that if such a thing as the Force existed, then Galen Erso would be at peace and one with the Force," Krennic finishes. "Galen, my friend, you will be remembered."

Still, Lyra's inexplicable taunting does not stop. It plays along with Jyn Erso's voice and their final whispers from an Imperial transport that carried an Erso cadaver. _You'll never win_ , Lyra had said—Jyn had said. Yet beyond that, watching the millaflowers on the Erso memorial, Krennic feels he already has. He clears his throat and steps away from the crowd. His hands do not shake beneath the dark gloves he had donned, but they harden as if he is the one who held the blaster to Galen.

> _And I pray, to the Force and everything thing else that will choose to listen, that Jyn Erso does not find that place among the Empire. I do not take this prayer selfishly. She has an intensity that I regret to say her father might never have had. Jyn Erso has a strength in her own humanity, and she might never have realized the presence she brings to a room. Galen Erso had a modesty that led to notice; Jyn Erso has a fire that cannot be ignored._

Krennic mutters to himself quietly, "I did not kill Galen." It is true, of course. He did not kill Galen, or Lyra; they killed themselves with the foolishness of their own choices. Though there will always be respect for the man, Krennic is not fond of having to clean the mess up himself—or rather, having Tarkin yell at him to clean it up.

> _She is a young woman with a fervor capable of capturing this entire galaxy; she is a power the Alliance has somehow put away. Yet to speak of her and her father as only rallying points would be an insult to their name. Because after all this, Jyn Erso is a young woman who has lost too much, given too much and gained too little. She is troubled and quarrelsome and, like her father, impossible to forget._
> 
> _The future of this Rebellion, and our step against the Death Star, is_ not _Galen Erso's legacy. There is talk in quarters that the Death Star is how the Erso name shall be remembered. I will dispute that claim to the last of my dying days. If anything, his legacy lies with Jyn Erso and the extraordinary person she can still become._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plus points to one of my irl friends who noticed how Jyn's emotional arc is on reverse! _Kudos and Comment!_


	12. Bitter Chills

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Before I Freeze Over**

**Jyn hasn't left the room the** entire evening. It isn't exactly their fault they arrived on Hoth in its night cycle. High Command would rather meet her in the morning, and Chirrut kindly volunteered his room (as if he doesn't already stay in Baze's.) Of course, Bodhi would like to think that she's slept the whole time. Seeing her, less gray than when he last saw her—but even darker eyes, Bodhi knows that she needs that sleep.

But she didn't. If Bodhi so much as pressed his ear against the wall, he could hear Galen whispering from the other room. Clicks later, it doesn't actually stop. Bodhi knows she's listening to the messages K-2SO had given her on the ship. He also knows that those messages don't matter to her in the slightest.

Jyn is looking for one particular message, a message that Cassian doesn't have. And the only other people who've seen the message are all dead—but Bodhi knows. He's carried that very message for three years. She and Bodhi can listen to Galen's voice clicks upon clicks, but Jyn will never find the words of a message no one else has seen.

She will always be looking for that message, even if she knows it's gone. Bodhi speaks from experience on that front. Sometimes, he forgets about Jedha, his family, and the fact that they're gone. It all just sweeps him off his feet so suddenly.

Bodhi thinks about something that his mother might like, but then he remembers. He realizes every time that she isn't there anymore, and _every single time_ , it doesn't open any wounds—it makes new ones. He isn't as good as Kay-Tu at reading people, but he can only guess about Jyn.

Bodhi approaches the door, hesitates a while before knocking fiscally. "Jyn?" He can hear Galen talk from behind the thick door. _There is a pilot I have sent your way. He will most likely be in an Imperial uniform, but if he calls me by name then you must not harm him._ Abruptly, the message stops and the door opens to Jyn's obviously sleepless eyes.

Her green eyes are circled with veins of red, and her hair is still down. Bodhi isn't used to her hair being loose around her shoulders. Not that it makes her seem weak, but more like it makes her seem _fragile_ —so unlike the bruised and battered girl who told him to run from a shipwreck.

He clears his throat. "Cassian and Kay-Tu are heading here in an eighth hour, and I just thought I should, erm," Bodhi nods, "tell you." He gestures to his own face to reference to her restlessness. Jyn's face contorts into an amused grimace as she swings the door a bit wider for Bodhi to see.

Considering it's only a night, Chirrut's bedroom is nicely kept. Well, it always is since the man hardly actually _sleeps_ in it. The bed is unused, but rumpled from where Jyn has lay out the whole night. Holochips are scattered around the sheet, with a small holoprojector no bigger than Bodhi's hand. "I mean, so you can get ready and everything," he adds.

Jyn smiles. "What are the stories?" Of course, that is exactly what Bodhi's come to prepare Jyn for. Not the meeting with High Command, but the whispers from whatever's left of the Rebel Alliance. She needs to know, so she can detach herself before it affects her. This is what Bodhi thinks.

"One," Bodhi coughs as he steps into the room. "And it is _very_ famous in the meal lines." He takes a seat on the bed. "Well, two, but they're related theories." Theories that are still very possible even if Bodhi can say he trusts Jyn.

She leans against the wall in nonchalance. Her leg shivers a bit, but it's probably just from the cold. "I have a guess."

"Some people think you're a spy," Bodhi says. "The first half thinks you were a spy for the Alliance, and the other half thinks you're a spy for the Empire." They're both unkind in Jyn's context. And one might be true, but for the sake of everything, Bodhi hopes for neither.

"As in, the whole 'run away to the Empire' thing was a ploy for you to sneak into the Empire and spy for any new developments." Plausible, and that would mean that their spy crew would also be a ruse to mislead Imperial leeches. "And the other side is that the Empire purposely set a spy after you so that we'd trust you and you'd lead them here to the base."

Jyn laughs, and Bodhi thinks it's the first time he's ever actually heard her laugh (the sabacc game didn't count.) "I'm not."

"For the Alliance or for the Empire?" Bodhi raises his eyebrow. The palm-sized holoprojector is in his hand, and he fidgets with the circular machine.

She walks closer to the bed and picks up the mess of holochips on the blanket. "This isn't a black and white fight, Bodhi. I'm out of that Venn diagram already. At this point, I'm more refugee than I am possible spy."

Bodhi rubs the sleeplessness out of his face. "Also, aside from that—" There is the usual sound of Cassian clearing his throat at the door. Bodhi stands up and tosses the projector to Jyn, who catches it reflexively. "Cassian is here!" he looks at the chrono. "And you're early."

"And you're awake," Cassian replies.

Bodhi shrugs. "I just wanted to talk. I was just about to get to the more interesting parts of the conversation." Jyn raises her eyebrow at Bodhi with an inquisitive stare.

To break away from the silence of her infamous glare, Cassian rescues Bodhi with another cough. "Yes, I'm early. I figured Jyn would want to eat before she and High Command see each other again." Ah, yes. The last meeting ended with Bodhi smuggling Jyn out to Eadu, wherein more dangerous things have followed. "Trust me, your meals might be better back on Coruscant, but the ones here have gotten a bit better."

Rebels need to be in better shape considering the environment they're in, so of course gets a bit better, not that it was bad to begin with. It grew on the taste spectrum, though really it was more the portion sizes. Bodhi makes a gagging face at the thought of the food (which isn't _that_ bad) and Jyn laughs again. She and Galen have the same sense of humor, it appears.

"You can go back to sleeping in, Bodhi. Or you can start loading your ship for that weekend at Cloud City," Cassian stands at the doorway. "Jyn's coming with you, right?"

Bodhi nods. (Jyn also plays along with a somewhat reluctant _yes_ that is followed by an eye roll.) Cassian hums, "Okay, remember to bring some guns. Don't tell her where you keep them." He cocks his head towards the corridor, "Let's go." Without waiting for a reply, the _captain_ turns around and walks away at a slow pace.

So quickly, her laugh dies away. But it is a phoenix that can burn into the ash of a sneer but Bodhi is sure it will always come back. "Cassian has that effect on people," he regards the ghost of a smile on her face.

"I'm starting to see why," Jyn smiles, but it isn't a happy kind of smile. She's tying her hair into a small knot at the back of her head. Bodhi thinks that it is a kind of symbol for Jyn. She'd kept it loose on Eadu, and Coruscant. This is her moving out and back into the rebellion.

She puts on her new coat, which was given to her earlier that night, and follows Cassian out of the room. Bodhi approaches the bedside table and juggles the holoprojector in his hand.

He picks a chip from the stack and holds it between his index and his thumb. Bodhi rolls the chip between his fingers as he stares at the holoprojector he's been juggling in his hand. He thinks for a moment before setting both back on the surface and leaving the room.

Cassian's right: Bodhi still needs the sleep.

 **Have you ever had your** limbs fall asleep? Felt that soothing chill that comes to you when you start to feel again? Oh, Jyn is feeling it. But there's an untold ending to that sensation: a painful discomfort that only comes when you try to move.

Jyn is ice, like Hoth. The wall of black frost at the back of her mind has begun to thaw under the exposure of blue light, and the icemelt fills her veins with bitter cold. Her cave peeks at her from beyond it. The defrost is painful, but for a night she has no dreams, no nightmares, and no sleep at all.

 _Let Jyn know that my love for her has never faded. That not a day has gone by without my thinking of her, her mother,_ our _family._

Is that right? Jyn can't recall exactly. Constantly she hears her father's voice, but they aren't the words she's looking for. It his voice from transmission he's sent to the Alliance, they are all business and nothing more or anything less.

 _You too should run. Jyn, run_. She tried to run, but she can't now. Any movement will hurt her, as the cold is only flowing through her entire body in something that calms her and makes her hurt too much.

 _It's happening. I let it happen. I should've stopped it._ These are the words that echo in her, and these are the words she doesn't want to know. Her gaze rises to Cassian. Perhaps she has always been feeling this cold, but the embers in her have always kept her warm. She tries to think of something to say, anything.

The rebels watch her again, just like they did on Yavin 4. The words _Erso_ and _spy_ are in the crisp cool air on the under-ice base of Hoth. "Ignore them," Cassian leans to her so he can whisper. "News travels fast when the Alliance doesn't actually have much to do."

Jyn wracks her mind for what she's heard or read from the news docs at Coruscant, as she carefully skirts away from the black slush she's frozen away. "So the blockade at Chandaar isn't Alliance?" If Jyn were in the Fleet (Imperial, of course) she'd be in that depth of information. Fortunately for these people, she isn't.

"No," he shakes his head, "It's mainly Cronese people taking back their system. Mothma wants to help, but we've been crippled since the Death Star."

Jyn bites her cheek at the mention of the Death Star. She winds back, to an offhanded comment Krennic once made to her days before he blew up. But before it could play, she spits her consciousness back to the nonchalant conversation she has with Cassian.

"They all think I'm a spy," her head jerks towards the passersby with lips moving too fast for reading. "Why don't you?"

Cassian only smiles and turns away. It's that kind of smile that makes Jyn wish she still has his blaster. There is always poetic justice being killed by something that was once yours. But Jyn doesn't actually want to kill him, honestly. It's herself she needs to watch out for now.

"Because you're still trying to make your father proud," he says.

 _It makes me proud to think that you can fight when I cannot_.

They stop before a carved arch of ice that exudes a bit of warm, presumably due to the tight pack of people in the mess hall. It smells of blaster oil and steel and sweat, despite the frigid air of Hoth. And Jyn is thirteen again, angry and lost and practically a child among Saw Gerrera's Partisans. She thought she was an orphan, and she really is now. Rebels everywhere, names she doesn't know and faces she doesn't recognize.

And it's stupidly early. Jyn forgot that nine in every ten rebels rise with the sun, no matter the system.

The line isn't as congested as Coruscanti airway traffic. Some eyes pass over her at the line, some look away just as she scans the room. Jyn doesn't want to press so close to Cassian, but the notice isn't boding well for her.

Further poking and study tells Jyn that it's a hash of bantha beef, protatoes and some other vegetable Jyn can't identify—and she lived a major part of her life on a farm. She takes a spoonful then decides to drown herself with the watered down caf in her styroplas cup. Bodhi's opinions aren't wrong when it comes to a former Imperial taste. "I suggest you eat quick," he points at her food. "I didn't come get you early enough, because you have minutes."

"I'm not actually eating, you know," she stirs the hash around. It's gone cold a long time ago, which leaves Jyn to wonder exactly what time they cook the food for the human rebels. Especially since it's already congealing.

Cassian laughs, more for himself than it is anything else, "More for the tauntauns then." It doesn't motivate her to start eating.

Some of the Rebels drop in with pickaxes and the like, but Jyn has already been briefed on that event. Echo Base—aptly named by the way everything echoes if you say it loud enough—is still under construction. The information is only meant to warn her about the wampas who might attack her in her sleep. (It doesn't change what she thinks about her relationship with the Alliance at that point.) After all, with so many open holes in the glacier, the ice creatures can just crawl their way in and have their way with all the rebels if they feel like it.

And those rebels, as they pass over the table, send odd looks over to Cassian's direction. He appears unfazed, but he's a spy. It's second nature to control his face. Jyn has learned the habit in Coruscant, especially at all the dinner parties. She thinks its opinion that sends them to look at their direction. Perhaps Cassian has let another family die out again.

Of course, the more logical explanation is that he's in the base for once. If Bodhi, Baze and Chirrut are anything to go by, then Cassian has thrown himself into mission after mission with barely any time to mingle in Echo Base. One more person passes by, and Cassian downs his caf with a graceless flourish. Clearly, the focused attention is affecting him more than he lets out. "Let's go."

 **Major Cassian Andor is a good** agent, no doubt. He deserves that promotion. But if Draven were to have at least one negative opinion of the man, it will be regarding the Erso missions.

He was supposed to extract Jyn Erso from Eadu, but instead returned with news of Galen Erso's death and other vital information. He's supposed to come back from Coruscant with new information and Imperial secrets, but instead returns with Jyn Erso.

"Good to see you again, senator," the young woman smiles at Mon Mothma, or rather, her hologram. For some reason, Jyn Erso is wearing a sergeant's coat, unlabeled but obviously not hers. "General," her attention passes over Draven. Her eyes cross Major Andor, no words besides an eye roll.

Draven tugs at the cuffs of his jacket. "We can skip the formalities, Miss Erso."

"We can skip the introductions then too," she replies, "I know who you all are." Her eyes scan the round table and the only two people standing around it. General Rieekan has more pressing matters to attend to, and would rather not deign to join this conference. "And since my scandocs have probably popped back up into the Imperial registry, I guess you actually know who I am now."

Jyn Erso has come back a worse person than when she had first arrived back on Yavin 4. At least then, she was trying to fight the Empire (though the Alliance was always a target for her.) Now, it appears, she's become entirely lethargic towards the fight. She's gone from caring about her father and herself to caring about nothing else at all.

"This is more for our benefit than it is for yours, Jyn," Cassian Andor says as he holds a datapad in his hand.

The young woman shrugs. "Why don't you keep out the 'I was invited to join the Fleet.' part? It's overdone."

Draven has read that file days prior. Of course, if Mothma feels that Jyn Erso might make a valuable ally, he is in no position to argue no matter how much he might want to.

"Within your first week at the University of Coruscant, which was only days after the Eadu extraction and days before the Death Star advance on Yavin 4," the major's eyes continue to skim the scandocs. "You were approached by a captain of the Imperial fleet."

Jyn Erso appears unfazed. "I said no. Just like I did for the next two times."

If the Empire is that persistent regarding her recruitment, then perhaps they are unaware of her connection to the Rebel Alliance—most likely basing on how she reacted when her father was shot down on Eadu. If Draven were to put himself in the enemy's course of thinking, then the Empire would most likely be trying to get Jyn Erso due to her obvious ties to the extremist movement. With the right military backers, she would make a formidable foe ready to take down the Alliance.

"You graduated after only two months," he continues.

Erso's face is smug as Mon Mothma is only smiling. "I just knew it all too well," she scoffs.

Andor ignores the remark. The ex-senator's expression only gets more defined despite the grainy frequency of the hologram, but it dies as soon as she sees Draven studying her quizzically. "After which, you continued to be unemployed, which the Empire took as an opportunity to try and recruit you again."

Jyn takes a long and breathy exhale but doesn't comment. Draven takes this as some sort of victory. He stands beside Andor, casting small glances at the file. "While the Empire is oblivious, we are aware of your private account in Betha II, which you have been withdrawing from in set amounts every week."

That is mainly the reason why she has continued to go as a non-working socialite citizen of the Imperial center. She wouldn't need to work with credits lining her accounts. Jyn Erso most likely committed the arson itself, but got good money from the insurance anyway. Her father's savings are helpful as well.

"Meanwhile, Lianna Hallik was mourned among the many dead from the Jedha mining disaster," Draven notices the twitch of a smile on the major's face, "Tanith Ponta was found dead in her home, unclear whether by suicide or by a criminal gang she associated herself with. The case was never looked into." It's also obvious that she arranged the demise of all her concurrent alter egos.

Draven clears his throat, "And since you insist on your uselessness to us," he picks up, "We'll just have to change that." His eyes travel to Mon Mothma, who shows no signs of forthcoming arguments, "You have to pay your dues some way, such as hollowing out the rest of Echo Base." Which is, of course, the initial course Rieekan had agreed upon to begin with.

"What _dues_ ," Jyn Erso stands. Cassian Andor steps back intelligently to a safe distance in which he can escape if the young woman decides to lunge. "do I have to pay that require freezing my face off?"

"You have no home to return to, yes?" He shrugs deliberately, "We're giving you a place to stay, but it isn't exactly free."

"But you can stay as long as you like," Mon Mothma adds. The ex-senator once told Draven that the Alliance has made many mistakes regarding the Erso family. He feels as if he should chalk it up to favoritism, but it feels more of guilt. Mothma reserves her usual poison for anyone else but Jyn Erso.

If anything, it is that young woman who is playing poisonous, "I'm only staying three days, Senator." Draven's superior does nothing more than a near imperceptible nod and a gesture of dismissal.

Jyn leans away from the table; she is already facing the doorway, but her attention is still focused on them. "So that's it, then? I just have to whack and melt ice for three more days, then I get to disappear."

"The disappearing is up to you, Jyn," Mothma's voice follows the girl out of the conference room. She casts one sidelong glance of callousness as she grazes Draven's air, before the hologram promptly fades away.

Andor heaves in a sigh. "I'm going after her. She might run aga—" _Run again_. Like last time, where she persuaded Bodhi Rook to smuggle her out of Yavin 4 and onto Eadu.

"Why three days, major?"

The other man's posture straightens more so habitually. "She's joining Rook to Bespin, general."

Draven purses his lips. Bodhi Rook's days off are the Alliance's worst kept secret, having reached all corners of the new Echo Base by only the third exit. There are really no rules against it, but most rebels know better than to risk going into out into the open. Some rebels are more devoted to this cause than anything. Off-days are just regular days with more people judging them.

Jyn Erso is currently being hunted down. Her disappearance is not important enough to warrant a small group from the Stormtrooper Corps. At best, she is being hunted down by nothing more than questionable bounty hunters. Rook's outings are always a risk, but putting Jyn Erso on that ship makes it a bigger one.

"Go with them, major," he commands.

Andor nods, but the knit of his eyebrows bears his curiosity. "Of course, sir, but I assure you: she doesn't need to be protected."

Draven would laugh if not for the gravity of the situation. "That much is already obvious, Andor. I want you to go with them because Jyn Erso knows something. The only problem is that she doesn't want to tell us. Stick with her for the next three days; go with her to Bespin. Get her to trust you, major, and get her to tell."

Thanks to Galen Erso and the step ahead he granted, the rebels have been united at one singular front. Wherever possible, Draven must kill off the very things that will tear apart the Alliance—whether by surrender or extremism. Once again the Erso's will be vital.

"Yessir," Cassian Andor nods, adjusts the collar of his coat, and then leaves.

 **Baze loads their only set of rations** (and some credits) onto the Bodhi's cargo ship. The pilot commandeered it from Eadu, before he and the rest of the Blue Squadron destroyed what was left of the facility. Baze imagines the ship is some sort of compensation for the two ships destroyed under Bodhi's piloting. (Then again, it was Bodhi's piloting that saved him from the unfortunate fate of the rest of the Blue Squadron.)

The pilot approaches Baze while pulling the goggles from his face. He's just returned from a patrol out in the harsh cold of Hoth, and there is still snow dotting his long hair. Baze ruffles the snowflakes away with his hand. "Where's Chirrut?"

"Inside," Baze gestures towards the cabin of the ship. It's warmer in there, after all. Then Jyn enters from the south passage, and Baze is forced to snort. Bodhi turns and does the same. They both know of her history as a petty criminal, but the title is more of _criminal_ than it is _petty_. "That's Cassian's coat," he tells her.

The young woman folds her arms over a coat that is ultimately oversized in her terms. "It's _comfy_." Cassian has most likely set to wearing his standard Alliance Major coat, but he'd also notice if his favorite fur-lined parka went missing.

Sure enough, Baze is right about the coat thing. Cassian Andor stands behind them with his eyes on Jyn Erso—or maybe just his coat. "I was wondering where that was."

"I just took it this morning," Jyn turns around. "which w _as_ "—she gazes at the nonexistent chrono that supposedly on her wrist—"twenty minutes ago. Have you come to see us off, captain?"

It's unheard of. Cassian never said goodbye at the previous 48 times they've done this. Baze knows because K-2SO is keeping a tally. Instead of answering the question, Cassian corrects her instead. "It's _major_ , Jyn."

He never tries to correct the deliberate mistake if Baze, Chirrut or Bodhi make it. "I'll get the ship started," Bodhi crosses between them, up the boarding ramp, down the ladder and into the cockpit. Baze decides to get in through the cabin as well.

"The major is not here to see you off," K-2SO answers in his stead, "We are here to join you on your journey to the Cloud City on Bespin."

"Oh, joy," Baze hears Jyn mutter.

K-2SO steps onto the ship along with the other two just as Baze lowers himself down to the cabin. "I imagine that a weekend in Cloud City will be just so, Jyn Erso."

Baze imagines it will not only be a joy, but also very _very_ interesting.


	13. Trust Goes Both Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **Motive of Operation**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of the chapter goes deep; but if you're one of those people who read the sneak peek from my tumblr ( _aurebcsh_ if you want to get things like that too) you probably already know. I'm not proud of the phrasing of ANYTHING.
> 
> Also of important note, I'm trying to keep the OT characters here to a minimum. Think of it this way, I'm preserving that side of canon so the movies still have to happen —but sometimes there's going to be a little twist. We are, after all, still two years away from ESB.

**On the list of things Bodhi has done,** this… actually isn't that bad. He _will_ be thrown out into the Hoth winter for disobeying superior orders though.

Cassian is still hovering over the captain's chair. "Cassian," Bodhi turns around, "I can handle this."

In all honesty, Bodhi is not very sure he can. He's flown the route from Hoth to Bespin multiple times, but that doesn't mean he can't doubt himself. The only thing Bodhi's ever done is doubt himself, and this day—when he is at his most confident and comfortable—is no exception.

If all Bodhi's done is doubt and all Chirrut's done is believe (and in extension, all Jyn's ever done is fight), all Cassian's ever done is try to control everything.

Which is why he hardly works with actual living beings. Once a living thing is involved, the situation can't be controlled. Bodhi is used to the fact that Cassian disappears with K-2SO on assignments and doesn't ever invite any of them. It's one of his more annoying traits.

In other words, Cassian wouldn't be on this ship right now if he didn't have a mission to deal with. It's a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless. "Don't pull rank on me, Cass," he says as he flips various switches and buttons, " _I'm_ the captain of this ship."

Bodhi rests his hand on the hyperdrive and turns to face Cassian, whose face betrays nothing. "I don't mean this to offend you, but I am a more practiced pilot."

"Stars, Cass, I said I can handle this." He laughs as the ship hovers in space momentarily. It will take a few more minutes before the jump to hyperspace. The Bespin system is generally distant, but the cluster of planets makes a possible trajectory hard to compute. Bodhi can still do it though. "You don't need to control everything."

He scowls. "I am not trying to—" Bodhi doesn't let him finish.

"Thanks anyway, captain," He turns again to face the viewport. "But I don't need a co-pilot right now."

Bodhi imagines he shrugged then walked out. Cassian has never been a man to emote—but Bodhi knows that there are emotions down there. Bodhi once caught him alone just days after Galen died. Even if it was bad, Bodhi was glad to know it wasn't another droid under that fluffy blue coat.

Bodhi gets the sense that the man doesn't really want to copilot. (If Cassian is ever going to fly a ship, he _has_ to be the captain.) Right now, he only wants to get away from the people in the cargo hold—or more accurately, any kind of personal conversation with Jyn Erso when there are people watching.

And for Jyn, Bodhi isn't too sure. Sometimes she laughs—at the same jokes that would have made her father laugh. Her cheeks tug whenever he, Baze or Chirrut pass by. (Bodhi doesn't know about how she deals with Cassian. They're never in the same area when Bodhi's around. It's an art form: how they dance around each other.) Jyn will smile and try, but she will not feel at all. She's as cold as the air she breathes, no matter how she tries to pretend to Bodhi that she isn't.

But when no one is around, and Bodhi has his ear pressed to the chilled walls of his quarters in Hoth, Galen's voice comes from the other room. It is only in these times that Jyn feels, and it isn't even a good kind of feeling. Bodhi still isn't that good at reading people, but he knows fear, pain and loss like the control panel of his ship.

 **In all honesty, Bodhi Rook is the most capable** pilot in the Rebel Alliance. Not the most skilled, but certainly the most efficient. With the exception of his post-psychological torture period, Bodhi actually doesn't need a co-pilot. Cassian just needed to be able to have a hand in what would happen next.

It's not a betrayal exactly, but he still needs to get Jyn to trust him—under questionable platforms. And even from those walls of aloofness and isolation, her trust is a detonator waiting to implode. Jyn put her trust in too many things, and those things were taken from her. She trusted the Alliance, for a moment, and it ended with her father dead. If Jyn wanted to kill Cassian then, for that momentary trust, then he can't imagine what she'd do when she finds out that he used her.

Cassian climbs down the ladder into the cabin. Chirrut and Baze are trapped in another set of articulate bickering—most likely over what numbers to play when they get to Cloud City. Kay is in the corner of the cargo hold, hooked up to a few wires and most likely uploading a new back-up drive. The light in the droid's eyes is dead, having momentarily disabled for the data transfer. Jyn's eyes are locked on his. "So you're actually joining us to Bespin?"

"People have to change sometime," he replies. These people are his friends, and he's just going on a weekend trip with them. It's something friends do, right?

He has friends, right?

Cassian can never _truly_ hold out on his own, which is why he has K-2SO. But when a droid didn't seem to be enough, Cassian found Galen and Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze.

Then again, Cassian has separate reasons to be going to Bespin.

Jyn purses her lips. "The Alliance's changed too," she says. There is no smile on her face, but no sneer either. She's only stating a fact, and that's the kind of emotion she chooses to express. "It's something new." _Like you aren't fighting a losing war anymore._ It goes unsaid, but it's in her eyes.

"I was hoping you'd notice," Cassian smiles on her behalf. There is a new aura among the rebels, despite the cold. It's a year-old emotion, but even Cassian noticed when it was there. It stays now, and he's gotten used to it. "It's _hope_ , Jyn. You had that once." It was all she had once.

"I had a lot of things, Cassian."

He nods, "And you lost that many things. It's why you push everything else away. It's practical. I used to think like that. When there's nothing around you, there's nothing to lose." It takes one to know one, after all.

"That's where you're wrong, captain," Jyn is finally smiling—a rueful expression, but it might be a little bit happy. "There is _always_ more to lose."

Jyn stands and makes for the ladder out of the hold. "I'll go see if Bodhi needs a copilot." He watches her climb up the ladder and disappear again.

Bodhi already made it clear to Cassian that he doesn't. But when a minute passes and Jyn doesn't reappear, he realizes Bodhi just wanted Cassian to at least talk to the other people in the cargo hold.

Well, that conversation died. Even the other two's argument has dissipated into steam.

Chirrut laughs silently, "It wouldn't be the first time you've chased Jyn Erso away from us all, captain."

Cassian thinks it's supposed to be a joke, because even Baze laughs. "Something about him always agitates her."

"She isn't agitated, Baze," Chirrut counters, "Flustered, angry, jealous. But not agitated." They have the habit of talking about Cassian when he's only a meter away—specifically in third person. After a year of knowing them, he's used to it.

It's understandable that Cassian would make Jyn flustered and angry. She has every right to be. It's better than the indifference she's bared from Eadu and Scarif and Coruscant.

He makes a sputtered laugh, "Jealous?" Aside from the junior officers in the Alliance who envy his rank, Cassian can't really think of anything in his life that anyone would be jealous of. Much more in the case of Jyn Erso. "Of what?"

If Chirrut weren't blind, he would probably share a pitiful gaze with Baze. "It's been a year," the sniper says in disbelief.

The time gap doesn't matter. Cassian still won't understand. He walks towards the bags and shuffles with their contents.

The sightless man places his hand on Baze's shoulder but faces Cassian. "She's been jealous of you and Bodhi. Only one has been treating her fairly." Chirrut tilts his head and smiles pointedly. Obviously, it isn't Cassian. "You knew her father, better than she did."

Cassian finds that hilarious. Galen _raised_ her, while they only knew each other a grand total of three years. How can Cassian and Bodhi know Galen Erso better than the man's own daughter?

"Now, personally, I have never met the man," Chirrut continues, "But I think that father who raised her is different from the man who was on Eadu."

Baze gently jostles Chirrut. "You're making the captain feel worse, Chirrut." At that, Cassian decides to pick up one of the blaster rifles folded into one of the duffel bag's ridges. (Bodhi brought guns, which is good. Cassian found them in less than four seconds, so Jyn can find them immediately, which is bad.) His nerves itch for action.

"I know how he feels, Baze," he replies, "He still carries his prison around with him everywhere he goes."

Cassian's hand doesn't exactly stop, since he's done this so many times. He already has it in his muscle memory.

He continues to fiddle with the rifle, dismantling and reassembling the gun over and over, even if his attention is now directed to Chirrut—and a conversation on Jedha from a million years ago.

 _There are different prisons beyond what we see, Captain_ , Chirrut told him. He ignored him then, returning to the lock that was wired with a bomb. Jedha was a strange day for them all.

Chirrut says now: _He still carries his prison around with him everywhere he goes._

"But the Force has never been stronger." Chirrut doesn't necessarily face him—as one usually can't if they're blind—but Cassian forces his eyes and ears to the old zealot anyway. Kay-Tu may be the best at strategic analysis, but Chirrut is undefeated when it comes to reading a situation and the people in it.

Cassian shakes his head and returns to breaking down the rifle in his hands. But still he continues to listen. "It's her, isn't it?" Baze asks.

The next is silent, so soft that Cassian barely picks it up—if not for his spy's ears trained to pick up sound beyond walls. "Jyn Erso still shines, Baze. There are walls we don't know are there, but the light comes from beneath."

The world goes white as the light from beneath struggles to chase them beyond lightspeed.

 _ **Hope. You had that once.**_ But before that, she had fire. Saw gave her that fire, and she hated him for it.

But the hope; the moment Cassian told her that he knew where her father was, that her father was alive, he did the worst thing anyone can ever do to her: Cassian Andor gave her hope.

She lost her mother. She lost Saw. She lost her father, but stars forbid she lose the hope she never wanted. All she has is hope.

 _No_.

All she has is her cave and the dying words of the ghosts of her past. They told her to run, and she should have run. Jyn chose to listen to something else: words meant for the world, words never meant for Jyn to hear. They tell her to believe and save and dream and destroy.

She listens because she _needs_ to remember Galen Erso and Saw Gerrera.

Saw told her to save the rebellion, to save his dream. Jyn is trying, just _trying_ to keep that fight alive for him.

Her father told her that the Death Star must be destroyed.

When she saw Cassian on Scarif—where the last copy of the schematics were—Jyn had to honor those words. She led Krennic out of the databank, because Cassian had to steal those plans and destroy her father's monster.

She didn't exactly expect him to destroy the entire base. (Not that she blames Cassian. Jyn has blown up enough Imperial facilities for all four of her lives.)

There are always more than two ways to honor her father's memory and Saw's dream.

But those whispers from her hatch aren't the last memories of her father, or Saw.

There is still Bodhi, Cassian and K-2SO, who kept her father away from the loneliness that slowly ruined Jyn.

There is still Chirrut and Baze who survive as the last remnants of Saw's Jedha and the Jedha of the Old Republic, the world her mother believed in.

Jyn shouldn't be on this cargo freighter. Her presence risks their lives—and with them the memories of her father, the Galen Erso she doesn't know, and the remains of Saw Gerrera, a man built of fire, steel and sheer willpower.

It's only a weekend with the people she's trying to get away from. Then she gets to disappear, continue her own fight with herself, and they make their distance.

She's a detonator that can't light on its own.

Loneliness will never make her happy, but loneliness will sure as hell keep her safe. She should have listened to her father when he first told her. She should have _run_.

Self-preservation isn't cowardice, but what she's planning isn't only self-preservation. She'll gladly plunge herself in ice and let go of emotion again if it means that Saw and Galen can rest in quietly in her memory. It's her best option, but it's the least pleasant.

There are plans and secrets and lies, and Jyn hopes that they survive this probably disastrous weekend with her so that they can know. Because if she tells them now and something happens on Bespin, then everything is ruined and her fire will finally consume her.

_Save the rebellion! Save the dream!_

She's trying. Oh, stars above, she's _trying_.

She can't bring it to herself to just disappear from these people again. For hopefully the last time in her petty life, Jyn wants someone to think of her from between the stars. She wants someone to know that she's alive and she wants to be able to say at least one goodbye.

Jyn collapses on the ladder, her breathing is wracked and painful and her head reeling. (She's sure she hears Chirrut call her name over the echo of her hatch, but she's also sure to ignore it.)

The thaw is over, and the hatch shatters like baked clay. Her arms are numb over her, doing all they can to support her weight against the durasteel ladder.

She was in the engine compartment for the last minutes of the flight. She didn't notice their arrival on Bespin until the engine stopped running. They've just jumped out of hyperspace, and Jyn is in no proper position for the rest of the trip. Mentally or physically.

 _We were hoping to use you, Jyn,_ Mothma told her on her second day on Hoth. _Your father was helping us, but not enough, and we were planning to use you._

She laughed at that. _Guess I left before you could._

 _No_ , the ex-Senator confirmed, _we let you see your father, so that you would trust us._ Jyn never trusted the Alliance to begin with, but she still needs to save their cause. Not for them, or for herself, but for her past.

 _I believed that if you trusted us, it would make the 'using you' more bearable._ On one side, maybe. But trust is a weapon that Jyn will only let people wield once. Lyra Erso once told her daughter to trust a group of rebels. Lyra Erso died.

_We never planned what would happen next._

Maybe it was bound to happen; that even in a kinder universe, Galen Erso would die.

Does Jyn even believe in an alternate reality? Her parents didn't study the physics of the universe and the possibility of other worlds; they only studied the changes of the world around them.

 _People have to change sometime._ Did she really think that the world never changed? Then she is a fool. The world is made of miracles, unexpected earthquakes, storms that come from nowhere to destroy a planet. Anything is possible.

She jumps down the last three steps of the ladder to the main cabin, taking an immediate back step with her left to balance herself from the impact. Everyone else, from Baze to K-2SO, is already standing on the boarding ramp with their bags slung over their backs and shoulders, minus three layers since leaving Hoth.

"I do hope she wasn't looking for the guns," Kay-Tu says once Jyn is within their sights.

Cassian doesn't say anything to support the accusation, but his smile is still complacent. He knows where the guns are, or he knows there are no guns to begin with. No matter, Jyn doesn't even want them.

Jyn smiles cheekily at the droid before looking at Bodhi, "So where are we?"

They all take the same step forward out of the cargo shuttle. Jyn didn't get a good study of it on Hoth, but she can't see any signs of the spacecraft once being Imperial. When they're off, the boarding ramp closes behind them so Jyn can marvel at the view of Cloud City and the rest of the gas planet below them.

"I think the West Platform on the 26th level," Bodhi replies. As Tanith Ponta, Jyn knows that Cloud City is a mining colony, though the upper 50 floors are meant for resorts and casinos. Everything from below that is strictly into the mining business.

She also knows that the operation is small enough that the Empire doesn't interfere, but if it's a well-regarded resort location: an officer on vacation is bound to know her.

Luckily, she's prepared for that. Apparently, so is Cassian. He tosses her a set of scandocs. She quickly adjusts her duffel bag more securely over her shoulder so it won't fall as she catches the scandocs midair. Bodhi raises his own in the air and smiles endearingly as he holds up his own.

"Pleased to meet you, Katya Safin," Cassian says to her before gesturing to Bodhi, "This is Dev Cavora."

Bodhi makes a stunted wave to her. She stuffs the scandocs into the pocket of her bag. "So how come none of you get fake identities?"

"No one knows who they are," Bodhi explains, "And Cassian here is in Rebel Intelligence, so he's supposed to be a nobody."

Cassian picks up for a more informed intervention, "Because _Dev_ has had his name in all the news docs galaxy-wide once, but thankfully his face isn't so well-known. You, on the other hand, are a familiar in the Coruscanti socialite inner circle, and they most likely also take vacations in Cloud City. THe customers are the kind who don't want to attract attention to themselves."

"And when they see my face?"

"Didn't you cover that on your own, _Katya_?" he catches himself immediately that the transition is almost smooth. "You obviously told a story when Lianna and Tanith made the holonet."

Well, actually, that one was simple. The holograms where grainy, but the two certainly resembled her. Lianna Hallik had no body to be identified while Tanith Ponta—or at least the cadaver that Krennic helped plant—was too disfigured to look remotely like Jyn.

Meanwhile, he door to the facility from the platform opens to reveal a silver 3PO-series droid. Jyn steps closer to Bodhi and hisses into his ear, "You do have a cover story for this, right?" (In hindsight, it would probably have been best to discuss this on the ship or perhaps even in Hoth.)

"We're a commercial association from the Business District in Corellia," he replies, "We come here regularly, so it's usually for different reasons. Most of the hotel staff already knows us, so we'll just have to introduce our new co-workers."

"Greetings, Master Cavora," the droid traipses towards them. It nods at Baze and Chirrut before returning to 'Cavora.' "May I ask who are your new companions?"

"Hey, Em. This is Jeron Andor," Bodhi jerks his head in Cassian's general direction. "Katya's his plus one."

Jyn tries not to sputter uncontrollably. After the droid (most likely named M-3PO) hospitably shakes Cassian's hand, it turns to her. "Katya Safin," she _introduces_ herself as she takes the silver-plated hand.

"Truly pleased to meet you, Miss Safin," he shakes her hand vigorously. "And the droid?" Em's silver head rises up at the direction of the towering Kay-Tuesso. "Forgive me, but I'm afraid Baron Administrator Calrissian does not condone Imperial interference in this facility."

Cassian clears his throat, "Our superiors wanted to supervise our team-building operations on Cloud City, to see if funds are well-spent. It's not an intervention." Well, clearly they've woven a whole system of lies that Jyn isn't aware of.

After that, the droid directs them inside while continuing a conversation with Bodhi—ahem, _Dev_.

Concurrently, Jyn sidles up to Cassian. "I'm your _plus one_?" She practically hisses.

"We were supposed to brief you, but you weren't exactly anywhere," Cassian clears out, "We didn't look."

She doesn't bother to question that anymore. "Why Jeron though?" She decides to ask. "If you're going to keep your last name?" It's the worst way to go into hiding, keeping the original surname that can be used for future reference.

He places his hand at the small of her back as he directs her to one of the hotel's spinning corridors. He lets go before Jyn can sprain his wrist.

Baze, Chirrut and Bodhi seem to know where they're going as M-3PO saunters in front of them all. "It's my middle name, if you wanted to know."

Jyn hums in recognition, quickens her pace so she has a distance from Cassian and keeps walking steadily from there. He doesn't try to return to her side.

The hallway is straight from there, all the way to a pure white lobby buzzing with life. "You'll have to check in as per usual. Of course, the systems are unaware of any prior reservations."

"Katya!" Bodhi calls. He's walking backwards, facing her, "Toss me your credit chip, will you?"

Jyn stuffs her hand into the small pocket of her bag, where the holoprojector and her credit chip (Lianna's) is. "You never said I'd be paying."

"You get a little sidetrip after this, Kat," he replies. Bodhi's eyes say _DEMESEL_ , "Least you can do is pay for all of us."

Then Jyn reminds herself that this whole weekend is just Bodhi Rook blackmail. She takes out the chip and tosses it to him.

Once they arrive at the circular lobby, Cassian promptly plops himself onto one of the couches as Bodhi walks over to the desk agent. Jyn approaches the viewport and just watches the colors as the sun sets over Cloud City. It's a beautiful place, and a wonder as to why it's undiscovered.

"Sometimes I wish I wasn't blind," Chirrut says beside her. He nudges Baze, "It's still beautiful, I assume?"

"The clouds will always change, but the view remains the same," replies the other man.

K-2SO's mechanical whirring ends right behind her. "Clouds are visible masses of condensed water vapor suspended in a planetary atmosphere, with the property to reflect light into singular colors though mostly in white. However, planets in which humanoids and humans cannot be acclimatized to are also unable to form clouds."

Jyn turns around to stare at the droid.

"But yes, it is a common opinion that the clouds here are beautiful." The droid's eyes flicker over them, who are all looking at him with the same expression. "Honestly, you humans. I was making a joke. There is irony in finding a mass of cold air beautiful."

To break the awkwardness, Bodhi conveniently arrives bearing a little slip of flimsi most likely bearing their rooms' entry code. "They're going to keep your chip hostage for a while," he nudges her, "'In case of additional charges in the duration of your stay.'" The pilot says this in a pitiful mimic of M-3PO's mechanical voice.

The said droid doesn't accompany them anymore through the winding passageways as they approach their suite. (Oh, yes. Cassian knows for some reason that Jyn not only withdraws money from her Betha II account, but also deposits in it with the knowledge that one day she'd have to leave. He knows that much about her, and said as much to Bodhi. In turn, he checked them in to a multi-bedroom suite all because he knew he could.)

It's cold. Not a Hoth kind of cold, but an empty kind. Like the cave in Lah'mu.

Well, unlike the cave, it's a pure shade of white, with a somber glow from the ceiling that gradually shifts colors from red to yellow to navy and back again. Their bags are all tossed haphazardly in the center of the living room, with clear several plush seats and a semicircular network of adjoining rooms.

There's a counter on the left side, with a dining table hidden behind it. With a few snooping, she finds out about the kitchen and two refreshers. Either sonic or water.

Jyn pokes her head into the other rooms as she continues to survey the suite. "Okay," she returns to the round living room. "There are only two bedrooms. Both single bed." It might be a mistake in the reservations, or a budgeting tactic.

Bodhi's hand shoots up immediately. "I get one."

"I don't need to sleep," K-2SO says as he plays with a hologram on the counter at the side of the living room. It spells out _Zenreina's Cirrus_ is calligraphic Aurebesh.

"Baze and I will take the other room," Chirrut announces after popping up from said quarters. Baze, too, sticks his head into the conversation. "We'll have a protocol droid bring you some cots."

Jyn hikes her feet up the chaise longue that overlooks the window and the parts of the city below them. A few cloud cars pass by, with tourists watching the Bespin transition to night for the purpose of reminding Jyn that it's late, even if it's still only morning on Hoth.

Bodhi picks up his bag from their pile and walks into the room he's just claimed. "Well, we have time to explore the Bespin nightlife tomorrow. Now, I feel like sleeping through an the Hoth morning while in a warm environment."

The sound of his body collapsing on the obviously soft single bed is distinct to all their ears. Jyn stretches more over and takes a nap too.

 **Bodhi is sitting cross-legged** over Jyn's cot as Cassian tosses a bunch of pillows on his. Baze is exploring the kitchen, as he always does if their room ever has one, while Jyn is still enjoying the water refresher. Chirrut's in their room, most likely doing his evening prayers.

There's faint humming from within the suite. Obviously not Chirrut. Baze sometimes sings when he cooks, and maybe Jyn does it when she's alone. Bodhi decides to drown it out, whoever it may be. No one else can be listening either way.

"What's the mission, Cassian?"

The major tucks a blaster (set on safety for now) under the pillow as he looks at Bodhi. "I'm technically on shore leave." A master liar at his finest.

"And you spend your shore leave doing more missions," Bodhi shrugs. "You're here for a reason."

Instead of taking a seat on the fairly soft mattress, Cassian just takes to the chaise longue that Jyn had made home for most of the evening. "Is this the paranoia again?"

Bodhi's paranoia was a big issue long ago, when the memories of the entire Blue Squadron still haunted him. He's the last survivor of the whole team from the Battle of Yavin, and one day the universe will come to finish the job.

That paranoia has long since died out since the first trip to Bespin with Chirrut and Baze, and their camaraderie is the only thing keeping fear at bay. This isn't paranoia.

This is Cassian Jeron Andor trying to change the subject.

"Cassian, you're a very good liar," is his only reply. "But you have to be careful. If this mission has anything, _anything_ , to do with Jyn, she's going to break."

The man isn't looking directly at Bodhi. Up, at the swirling ceiling of amber light. "And if she can help with the rebellion; help the cause that everyone in Blue died for?"

Bodhi winces. "They're already gone, Cassian," he says, more for his own benefit than Cassian's. "Jyn is still here. I'm asking you this for her sake. Be here as a friend, not a major in a civil war. Don't just think about the people in Blue; think about Galen."

(Thank the stars Jyn apparently takes long baths.)

Cassian's head whips to Bodhi. "If I tell you that I am on a mission, will you tell Jyn?" Bodhi ignores the question.

"You have to know what it's like to be lonely," Bodhi continues, "I can never really be sure about what I'm seeing, Cassian, but Jyn looks like she doesn't _want_ to be lonely. She's looking for a home." Bodhi locks his eyes to him. "Whatever your mission—if it even concerns her, and I assume it does—you will break an already broken trust. Whatever home she finds, she'll never believe in."

Bodhi tries not to laugh at himself and think about how much time he's been spending with Chirrut. "And if you want her to help the rebellion, using her isn't the best way to start. So for once in your life, Cassian, be a rebel."

The sound of rushing water stops, a sound Bodhi hadn't noticed until it was gone. The distant singing, on the other hand, continues. (So it _was_ Jyn.) As if they're going by a natural schedule, Baze appears from the kitchen with savory-smelling dishes of Corellian porcelain. "Dinner!"

Bodhi stands up and heads for the dining table. Behind him, and yes he checked, Cassian fixing the cots to put a distance between his bed and Jyn's. (Because, frankly, K-2SO claimed the chaise longue before leaving the suite to explore the casino.)

There's a _woosh_ from the door of the water refresher. Just before Jyn steps out, pajamas and wet hair, Bodhi grabs Cassian by the wrist and practically hisses, "If you won't do it for her sake, Cass, then do it for Galen."


	14. At Least One Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **A Case of Mistaken Identity**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember that [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/ignite.the.stars/playlist/50qXZzYs9Ejh8bwMMZQfGN) i told you about? well, for this chapter, listen to _Ghosts_ by Pvris to get a nice grasp on the chapter's dynamics.

**Ever since that fateful day** on Lah'mu, Jyn has known she'd always have nightmares. They're a part of her life. But never has Jyn slept a night with an actual dream—not an old memory relaced with terror and all the words she's trying to forget.

Well, not a dream she can actively remember. That's the way good dreams are, she supposes?

Never has she slept in a bed so soft. (Well, she might've already, but she probably never got to _sleep_ in it given the state of her subconscious.)

Never has she slept in a bed that… moves?

Jyn's eyes flicker open slowly, to a close-up view of beige cotton fabric, to the steady sound of a heartbeat, to the scratchy rhythm of another human being's breathing pattern. Cassian's arm is slung loosely over Jyn's shoulder, as if it's deliberate.

And that's when she realizes that this isn't a nightmare-less night, but a night that someone was there in her moments. She had nightmares in the five days her father pulled a blanket over her, but they never woke her up in the middle of the night.

At least, not a uncomfortable awakening. It looks weird to see Cassian asleep, since it's been established passed the three days on Hoth that he always wakes early. Sleep makes him look younger, as if he isn't already. He's the 27-year-old Rebel Major, and that makes him sound older than he really is.

Asleep, heart beating under Jyn's ear, he's just Cassian Andor—five years older than her and just that.

She isn't exactly sure how they got to this position. Earlier that night, they all ate dinner—a delicious roasted queg courtesy of Baze Malbus—then watched a holovid over a game of _two-point_ _pusoi_ , a strange but easily fun card game.

Chirrut and Baze retreated to their rooms. Bodhi went to sleep in his room. Jyn and Cassian went to their own beds respectively, _six inches apart._ Somehow, she's lying there with her legs swung on her own cot but her head barely over Cassian's heart.

She tilts her head slightly up towards the wide-open window—or really, just a transparasteel wall since the transparency extends all the way to the floor. They're high up; the room Bodhi had checked them in to being way up on the twelfth level, 14 floors above the ship.

The view is wide and dark if not for little pinpricks of light from other rooms, apartments of the workers and overnight casinos. Cloud City is practically still asleep. In other words, Jyn is early—enough that even Cassian Andor is still asleep.

"Good morning, Jyn Erso," K-2SO's voice echoes around the white walls of the suite.

Jyn stiffens and just pretends to stretch, mumbling nonsense before rolling over to her _actual cot_ and snuggling her arms under her body. It's a wonder how she even got to Cassian's in the first place, considering that there's a distinct six-inch distance between them.

"Your heart rate is significantly increased from previous readings," the droid continues as Jyn picks up faint scents of half-done caf. "It's obvious you're awake."

She groans and sits up instead. Cassian's fluffy blue coat is rolled up and bundled into a misshapen excuse for a pillow. (Cassian took everything Chirrut and Baze left from pillows to blankets.)

Jyn takes the coat and puts it on, the inner fur lining hiking over her midthigh. It would tickle her if she weren't wearing leggings. She smoothes the coat over her body as she stands up.

"Why are you making caf?" Jyn takes a seat on the barstool by the counter. The sleeves extend over her hands, and she presses them on her cheek as she blinks the drowsiness from her eyes.

K-2SO is pouring a cup of the beverage in a porcelain set. "Protocol, apparently. I have a method coded in my system dedicated to Cassian's caf preferences."

Jyn feels like laughing at that, but she's in a suite filled with rebels. The lot of them are all designed to sleep light, ready to run at a sign of danger. "How old was he when you were reprogrammed?"

"Fourteen," the droid says as he sets the cup on the counter.

Ah. That explains it. As a teenage soldier in Saw's army, Jyn used to make a point of placing the detonators in certain formations because she could. "Is the Cassian now any different from that fourteen-year-old boy you know?"

Jyn takes the cup of caf and a sip from it. It's fragrant, stronger than Jyn likes but better than standard watered-down Alliance coffee.

"There is approximately 12 minutes to sunrise," K-2SO says, "The major would need his caf when he wakes, which is also in 12 minutes."

She takes another sip of the warm beverage and just shrugs. "Make another one."

The droid sighs as Jyn sets the porcelain cup down on the counter. "This is good caf."

"This is _Cassian's_ caf," Kay corrects. "But also good caf, yes."

Bodhi walks out of his bedroom and stretches, his eyes squinting over a small trance of a seven-hour sleep. "I can smell the caf, Kay-Tu," he mumbles in a barely understood line.

Then his eyes widen a significant size when he sees Jyn sitting on the counter drinking caf that isn't hers. "Hey, Jyn. You're up early."

She jerks her head towards the gigantic window. "Twelve minutes to sunrise isn't that early. Why are you awake?"

"I like to watch the sun rise here. It calms me." The Bespin sunrise is just about to catch up to them, the light outside hinting at a far-off gray.

Jyn hold the cup to warm her fingers, since they left the cooling unit overnight.

"Well, you had a rough night," Bodhi shrugs, "I don't know. You might've been half-asleep, but you were having some sort of nightmare. We wouldn't have noticed, but then you screamed and woke us all up."

_Eadu._

"You had another episode after that—no screaming, just really bad crying, but it ended pretty quick. Cassian probably smothered you with a pillow or something."

Cassian held her last night through one of her nightmares. For some reason, her memory decided not to register any recall of what is usually a lucid dream.

"Remind me not to kill him when he wakes up, will you?" Jyn asks Bodhi.

His face is strangely stony, a serious she only remembers from Jedha and everything later. "I make no promises."

It sounds lighthearted enough. Jyn laughs.

"But when he wakes up, don't kill him," Bodhi says. "You're both needed at the front desk for confirmation on some tour thing today."

She adjusts the sleeves of Cassian's coat to free her hands so she can properly hold her caf. "Why don't you do it yourself?"

"I never do that myself," he replies.

K-2 pulls out another cup from the other side of the counter for Bodhi. "Your preference: left in the decanter for approximately an hour."

Bodhi takes his seat on the second barstool as he drinks. Jyn does the same. "Well, I like my caf this way," she holds her cup up, "But with a bit more milk."

The droid returns the decanter to the kitchen, which is only across the dining table. When he comes back, he acknowledges Jyn with only a few words: "I won't need your preference when you're in Demesel"

Jyn takes another sip of her (read: Cassian's) caf and thinks that K-2SO's right. She won't need much in Demesel. It's where she gets to disappear.

 **Katya Safin and Jeron Andor steadily** approach the desk. Their body language is awkward, deliberately placed arms and stiff gaits. They appear unnatural compared to last evening.

3-KT runs through his preset greetings designed for guests and his internal database.

"We're here to—"

He decides to be generic. "A lovely morning, Mister Andor."

Miss Safin breaks out into a smile: a sign of a customer pleased. Her companion clears his throat. "Good morning. We're here about the Cloud Ca—"

"Oh yes! The Cloud Car Tours," 3-KT interjects yet again. "Such a wonderful choice. Highly recommended in deed."

Katya Safin is still smiling. 3-KT locks into the system data port conveniently set just under his right extremity. The Cloud City system, endearingly named CC, enlivens in conversation.

"It appears there is already a schedule tour for your group, though the reservations seem to be insufficient for your numbers."

Katya intrudes, "That's what we're here for, Kaytee."

He ignores the whistles from the central computer. System gossip is insignificant in the face of protocol and customer satisfaction. "Oh, of course, Miss Safin. I will amend the reservations and subsequently charge it to the registered credit account."

Safin hums in approval. "The funds in the chip are enough."

It's phrased to be a statement but 3-KT confirms it either way. "They appear to be." He promptly disconnects from the system. CC can wait seconds if she wants to converse. "Have a nice day, and do enjoy your stay at Zenreina's Cirrus."

As soon as they exit from the lobby, 3-KT reassumes his connection to the main computer. _The chip is in the name of Lianna Hallik._

"One of their superiors," he replies. "Honestly, you operating systems. All because you can't move freely."

3-KT listens further either way. _We've nothing of a Lianna Hallik on any of our systems._

"Are you insinuating that the credit chip is stolen?"

_Lianna Hallik once showed up on the holonet, an old issue. She was on Jedha._

This takes the droid by nothing short of surprise. "Lianna Hallik is dead! Oh, this can't be good at all, CC. They have an Imperial enforcer droid with them. Not good at all."

_Interesting isn't always good._

"I did not forget 'interesting,'" he argues. "Of course this is an _interesting_ turn of events, CC. Inform the guard when you can, and the Baron Administrator too if he wants to hear about it."

The Empire is interfering with Cloud City.

 **Cassian and Jyn walk through** the clean hallways of the resort back to their suite, where Bodhi and Chirrut are waiting for them. Baze and K-2SO have already left to the casinos earlier that morning. K-2 isn't actually allowed to play, so they're running a little casino scam via intelligently placed commlinks.

The whole itinerary was discussed before Cassian could wake up, which is ridiculous. He's a light sleeper, and he always wakes up early.

Then again, he might have been more tired than usual because of Jyn's sleeping habits.

Bodhi has never actually told anyone that Jyn had nightmares; then again it doesn't look like Jyn ever slept on Hoth to begin with.

Cassian was the first to wake up that night, over a painfully loud yell just over his ear. He sat bolt upright and pulled his blaster out from under his head. Next to him, Jyn was still, but tears were running down her face.

Chirrut was next to appear from the bedrooms. He knelt next to Jyn and gently stroked her head, which seemed to calm her down a bit. After that, they all gathered around the counter for a little chat—Jyn soundly asleep for a while and K-2SO forced to serve them kindly diluted Corellian gin.

When they went back to bed, and what was assumedly two hours later, Jyn had another fit. Crying, broken whispering of _Papa_ over and over again. She doesn't have regular dreams, only painful memories of the worst time of her life.

He sympathizes.

Cassian pulled her onto his cot and let the girl cry into his shirt. Her small frame intermittently reminded Cassian that there are other people in this war: selfless people who don't want to be selfless anymore, broken people who don't want to stay broken anymore.

Jyn is walking in front of him now, purposely speeding her stride whenever he makes an attempt to be on equal footing. He clears his throat, "About last night—"

"I don't remember." She slows her pace for a moment to let Cassian catch up her side.

He exhales in relief. "Good. Not that you don't remember, because a faulty memory is not usually—"

"Oh, I know what happened. Bodhi told me," she looks up at him, "I just don't remember my dream. Which isn't usually the case."

_Bodhi told me._

Bodhi Rook has been suspicious of Cassian since their flight from Hoth, and confronted him about it last night.

He coughs the thickness from his throat. "Did Bodhi tell you anything else?"

"There was a lot of talk before you woke up," she says. "A full twelve minu—" The statement ends up a stillbirth that dies in her throat.

She casts a sidelong glance when a man in a blue suit begins running behind them. It might be for any other reason, a staffer trapped in morning rush or simply a customer who wants to move fast.

Either way, Jyn doesn't seem to be taking that chance. She makes a sharp exhale, grabs Cassian by the arm and runs. Cassian pulls away from her grasp to stare at her and the man who appears to be her pursuer.

And it appears her suspicious nature isn't wrong. The blue-clad man, now most likely a guard in Cloud City, yells at them, "Stop!"

"Kriff," he exhales. Cassian turns around to follow Jyn down the hallway. They turn a corner as Cassian skids the angle. Then Jyn isn't in front of him anymore. Her hand grasps his and pulls her to a doorframe barely the right dimensions to fit them both.

Jyn whips out a blaster pistol—

"I took it from under your pillow," she mutters for his benefit. (Thankfully, Cassian set the blaster back on stun after Jyn's nightmarish episodes.)

—and fires two shots at the precise moment the guard officer is in their eyesight. He collapses on the ground with two charred holes in the back of his uniform. (Ok _a_ y. _Not_ on stun.)

Cassian immediately takes the gun from her hand. "What was that?"

"A warning shot," she answers. Her eyes switch to the officer for a split second. She quickly corrects herself, "Two."

He shoves the blaster into the waist of his trousers. "Warning shots don't usually hit a body dead-on, Jyn."

Jyn doesn't reply.

Cassian approaches the fallen man and kneels over him, rolling him over so he's face up. Cassian faces the wall behind him, no charred circles or signs of a shooting. The blaster bolts sailed into his upper thoracic cavity, but no further.

He quickly unbuttons the uniform. The position of the bullet's entry point on the mark's back and the obvious blistering on his other side means that the bolts hit vital organs. If he isn't already dead, he's close to it.

Cassian opens his mouth to speak, but it isn't his voice he hears. "Saddul? Saddul, have you got them yet?"

Cassian lacks details: their guy's speech and vernacular, any accents. He takes the blaster at his side and shoots the commlink on Saddul's belt.

He stands steadily as he replaces the blaster. "Doesn't matter anymore. More of them will be coming for us," he turns his head to face Jyn, "especially since you _shot_ him."

"I don't regret it," she announces. "You shot the commlink; of course they're coming. The question is who do we get first?"

Bodhi and Chirrut are closer, only a few hallways past, but the risk of more people catching them is greater. They can take a turbolift up before the entire staff can be alerted, and make their way down to 26 for the ship together.

"We get Baze and Kay-Tu first, grab Bodhi and Chirrut on the way down," he looks back at her. "Why are they after us to begin with?"

Jyn wets her lips as her eyes meet his. Her face makes the same expression as Galen when they're in deep thought. Her eyes widen as she looks ominously into Cassian's eyes. "The chip. I never changed the name."

Cassian berates himself on how he missed that paramount in seriousness. He releases a long and breathy exhale. "We need to go. They'll be here in at least two minutes, maybe spend less than that studying the body you decided to leave. This time, no shooting anybody. Try to blend in."

"Then let's get running." Her smile is despicable and annoying, and Cassian runs down the hall with her.

 **Jyn hasn't had the right amount of time to** commit the floor plan of Zenreina's Cirrus to memory. Thankfully, Cassian's seems to know where he's going.

He also appears to know that the safest turbolift is generally not the closest one. She's supposed to be running in the front, but in the end it's Cassian leading her through the winding hallways she forgot to wander.

"Do you actually know where we're going?" Jyn whistles as Cassian Andor of the Rebel Alliance takes them through another right turn—successfully dragging them into a complex knot of circles.

His pace borders brisk walking, as they pass a group of people going in and out of their hotel rooms. Jyn is needlessly reminded of Jedha, the city that is no more. The only difference is that now, people are specifically targeting _them_.

"Believe it or not, but I had some missions here," Cassian replies to her. They pass over to the wider main hallway. Thank the Force that the walls are all white. Any kind of detail, an artwork, and Jyn might have slowed down to study it.

She and Cassian weave in and out of narrow corridors and hallways bustling with the freshly awake. They turn another right into a wider hallway, familiar in a sense that she was on it twenty feet or so ago. Jyn hears the ominous sound of an oncoming storm as Cassian dashes back and pulls her to the side of the wall.

They're too far to escape to a corner, a corridor, literally _anything_. He holds her against the niche of a doorway—red light means empty—as the sound of footsteps edge closer. Jyn opens her mouth to take a deep, much needed breath, when Cassian leans down and kisses her.

And it's not like she hasn't been kissed before. Jyn can name at least three of boys from Saw's army that she's kissed.

She tries to remember their names, their faces, how they ended up dying. Words fly in and out of her head, but the only thing that registers in her mind is one startled _Oh._

Really, Jyn is just testing how far she can distract herself before this whole situation actually sinks in on her.

She wiggles her toes under her and fidgets with her fingers as they crawl onto his shoulders. She tries to count her heartbeats, maybe even his. _One, two, three…_

It is of Jyn Erso's greatest regrets to admit—

_Four, five, six…_

—that she—

_Seven, eight, nine…_

—kissed back.

Cassian pulls away. The blood in her head is in a rush, a mix of adrenaline and pure anxiety—the best mix for any stressful situation. Jyn's eyes open from darkness to the harsh white of that reality.

"Are they gone?" He whispers.

A whole squad, maybe six or seven, of the Cloud City security march past them, paying no attention to them. "Yes," Jyn exhales.

Cassian nods and pulls her away from the door. No time to deck him for now. He begins running in the opposite direction, probably back to where they started and then down the other way.

Just goes to show that she has almost nothing to this facility.

It's a straight hallway from there, but they're running and it's obvious. He takes a circle around the nearest corner on the left; Jyn deviates to the right. At some point, she trips a white-plated protocol droid. (On accident, of course.)

They run, like Jedha all over again. Eventually they meet at the turbolift. The lift is opaque, unlike the transparasteel lift from Eadu. Jyn stiffens at the thought.

Cassian jams the button with so much force, she thinks he might shoot it if the lift takes too long to get to them.

She closes her eyes. She can't think, can't see, can't hear. Everything decides to overwhelm her at this precise moment, and Cassian Andor is being very unhelpful.

"Get in!" He says against the vacuum of the opening lift.

Scratch that, she can hear just fine.

"A lovely d—" A droid tries to greet them, but then becomes aware. (Jyn hates it when that happens. K-2SO is a painful testament.) "My oh my, it's you both. Security will be alerted immediately."

Before it can connect to the central computer system and maybe even shut down the lift and trap them in there, Cassian flicks the switch at the back of its metal head and deactivates it.

Jyn huffs because she can't breathe. The cold in her nerves have melted into a fire that she wants to fan. They twitch and plead for action, and Jyn gladly answers.

As soon as the door of the lift closes, she grabs the lapels of Cassian's jacket and pushes him against the walls of the lift with more force than her nerve had wanted her to express. He's taller than her, and then again most everyone is.

She stands high on the tips of her toes and captures his lips with her own, dry and chapped as they may be. Deep down inside, Jyn hates herself already—but she doesn't care. She may be playing with her own fire at this point, but she also wants to see Cloud City burn.

The turbolift announces their arrival on the sixth level via a piercing _ding!_. Trying not to convey any kind of reluctance, Jyn pushes herself away from Cassian, but not before hissing in his ear, "If you ever do anything like that again, I'll shoot you too."

Baze is already standing in front of the lift. "Oh, good." He steps in and the lift closes before anyone else can get in. "There was an announcement about Imperial interference."

"That would be us," Jyn says a bit more breathy than intended. She makes a once-over of their personal turbolift crowd. "Where's Kay-Tuesso?"

Cassian leans on the side of the elevator, purposely avoiding Jyn's eyes. She's thankful for that. "Droids aren't allowed in the casinos."

"We made at least a thousand before the commlink went static and the announcement was made," Baze adds. Well, of course they're running a casino scam. Baze and Chirrut probably sat around Jedha as con men sans the Whills they should be guarding.

The lift makes its steady descent. Jyn eventually rationalizes that she should just avoid turbolifts whenever possible.

"Kay-Tu will catch up to us later," she says. "Now we just get Bodhi and Chirrut, hoping that security doesn't have them already."

Cassian shifts his weight from his left leg to his right. "Sounds like a plan."

The six levels pass by at an agonizing pace as Baze studying the disabled droid in the corner. "This is also you."

"Also us, yeah," Cassian replies. "Baze, Jyn, you go get to the suite. I'll head down to the platform and start the ship up."

"That's a long ride," Jyn comments.

His lips tug into a smile as they arrive at their floor. "We all have to endure it sometime. Now go before they arrest us."

Jyn and Baze step out of the turbolift. The man watches her curiously. "Why are we going to be arrested?"

She feels like laughing. "Because I never changed the name of my account. They think the chip is stolen." _Imperial interference._ "And since they saw Kay-Tu, they think we're here with the Empire."

"Then let's get going before we are arrested. These people have no love for the Empire."

"I might've killed one of them too," Jyn makes a face. She remembers the blaster in her hand, the quick motion of blue just before she pulled the trigger _twice_. She should avoid doorways too.

Baze laughs for her. "It's Jedha all over again, is it not?"

They walk the hallways fearlessly. This level has already been cleared, no doubt. They found the body and just doubled the threat. Jyn smiles bitterly, "I have no plans of having the Death Star destroy Cloud City, Baze."

"There is no more Death Star."

Jyn's bitter smile becomes something a bit more rueful.

 **There's more incessant pounding on the** door. The hotel staff usually has master key codes, but Bodhi and Chirrut made sure to blockade the suite well. They aren't sure who messed up: Baze and K-2 or Jyn and Cassian.

He's sitting on the sought after chaise longue, reading the Feature articles from news docs galaxy-wide. Chirrut isn't praying, just meditating.

Until Chirrut stops. His milky blue eyes pass over Bodhi, "Have you packed the bags?"

Bodhi sets the datapad on the low table. "Most of them. Why?"

"Open the door."

Of course Chirrut won't answer that sort of question. The man just _knows_. Bodhi shouldn't be asking questions like 'Why?'

The monk stands and heads for his bedroom, most likely to get their baggage. He, on the other hand, takes Cassian's lock picks and starts to play with the wires in the panel at the side. Bodhi discovered he could override and disable the door mechanism a long time ago, but it never served its purpose until now.

With a _whoosh_ , the door pulls up and Jyn and Baze are standing there. She rushes into the suite immediately and picks up her belonging from the pile at the center of the living room. Baze just casually enters. Once they're inside, Bodhi sparks the wires and the door closes again.

"What happened?" He asks.

Jyn's eyes narrow at Baze, who takes the mantle of answering the question. "Jyn just killed a man."

"Not the first time," she takes Cassian's coat from the pile of many and tosses Bodhi his own jacket. "Vacation's over, Bodhi. We need to go. Apparently, bringing Kay-Tu along was a bad idea too."

Chirrut pops out of his room holding all three bags—his and Baze's, Bodhi's and Cassian's. Jyn ties her hair up at the back of her head. _She's getting ready to fight._

"Where's Cassian?" Bodhi approaches the exposed wiring from the silver panel, in case Cassian might still be out there, but Jyn shakes her head.

"He went down to the platform to start up the ship," she says. "He's going to be waiting for us."

Bodhi steps towards the wires anyway, disconnecting this and that, coiling a wire around a lock pick and so on, "Then let's go."

They'll be banned from Cloud City for sure. The door opens for what will most likely be the last time in the hands of Bodhi Rook, and there's Cassian poised to knock. Baze chuckles, "We aren't taking that long ride ahead, I see."

"Close the door," Jyn commands.

Bad idea. He's been playing with the system for too long, it might go on lockdown.

The wires spark, and Bodhi—a man who loves his life dearly— lets go of the metal picks immediately.

While carefully avoiding that little danger zone, Bodhi studies what's left of the system. Cassian finishes the assessment for him. "You broke it."

"So we have no way out, the door won't close and we're currently wanted by the Cloud City police force," Jyn sums up, "If they catch us and the Empire gets hold of, well, me or Cassian, we're done for and maybe so is the rebellion."

Because Jyn has been in the Imperial center, and she's stayed at Echo Base. And because, well, Cassian is an Intelligence Officer.

"Don't let go of hope just yet, Jyn Erso," Chirrut advises.

She collapses on the couch. "This weekend was bound to be a disaster."

"It's interesting," Bodhi shrugs.

Her green eyes look at him pointedly, "It's my fault we're in this mess. It was _my_ credit chip, and it was _me_ who shot the guard."

"I blackmailed you into the situation, Jyn," he tries to excuse. ("Really unhelpful," Cassian comments behind him.)

Baze takes a seat on the adjacent couch as Bodhi takes a seat on the armrest. "If we're done for, as Jyn has put it, then I would like you all to know that I am not proud of last year, and everything I have done for the Rebellion. I want revenge on the Empire, yes, but not as much as I want to return to Jedha."

"You were the saboteur," Chirrut adds. "I have no qualms about last year, because we're all here now as friends."

Jyn snorts. "Might as well," she laughs. Her eyes scan them all and a spell of silence falls upon them, as if this isn't anymore a joke the Guardians of the Whills have set up. "The Empire is building a second Death Star."

When Cassian's eyes widen, the nature of his mission becomes more than apparent to Bodhi. "I'm next!" He interrupts quickly. "Sometimes I miss being with the Empire. Good food and a safe bed and… stuff like that."

"I'm not joking, Bodhi," she narrows her eyes at him. There is a need in her eyes, a hunger and demand fiercer than Bodhi has ever seen. Galen was a gentle man. His daughter was pure fire, like Saw Gerrera.

Bodhi makes the conscious decision to shut out every word she's saying. He's watching the late morning sun from the viewport, and the shadows the clouds make as they block ot the light. "I don't think anyone's chas—"

"Cassian, your blaster," Bodhi interrupts. The other man looks at him in surprise. "Your _blaster_ ," he presses again.

The press of a weapon is outlined into Bodhi's hand as he aims for the view port and pulls the trigger.

Nothing comes out.

"Ah, safety," Cassian warns. His notice is overdue, as Bodhi's cargo ship—and he knows it's his ship the same way he knows it's K-2 in the cockpit—is sailing for the clear window. They all see it, since they all noticed when Bodhi aimed a gun to the wall.

It's luck, pure unadulterated luck. The droid disappeared on Baze just as the ship disappeared on Cassian, but here they both are just in time to save their lives. The firing mechanism of the spacecraft peeks out from under the hull.

"Down!" Jyn yells as she dives to the side. She's lucky. The couch flips over without a balance, and Bodi comes with it. Baze presses to the far wall, and in the last second pulls Chirrut back with him. The cannons of the ship are locked onto the window, and it shatters within three seconds.

"I am never looking at the hotel charges ever again," Bodhi mutters to himself as he watches the boarding ramp roll open. His laugh is almost giddy as he leaps the gap between that ship and the ground.

 **Cassian leaves the cockpit to K-2** so he can send a message to Echo Base. He got what he was here for, and it certainly isn't what he was expecting.

_The Empire is building a second Death Star._

The research phase is practically over. They don't need ten years for Galen Erso and his team of engineers to research the destructive power of kyber crystals any longer. It would take no more than a few years to set a new planet killer into operation.

Knowledge of the new weapon is critical, an important step forward for the Alliance. If only Bodhi Rook weren't in the way.

"You're going to tell them, aren't you?" He stands with his arms folded over his chest. "About the second Death Star?"

Cassian pauses in his tracks. "That's the mission, Bodhi. And I didn't force the information out of Jyn."

"You're still going to tell High Command."

He scoffs, "This is important information the Alliance needs to know." Of course not. The puzzle pieces are incomplete. They need plans, locations of schematics. Jyn is the first lead in a while.

"But you know, you _know_ , what Draven would ask you to do once you have the information you need." Bodhi's should know with it. He used to run with Rebel Intelligence before General Merrick enlisted him into the Blue Squadron. Cassian knows that some part of Bodhi was relieved to be in another Rebel division.

"This is a war, Bodhi," Cassian excuses. Of course he knows what Draven will ask him to do next. He's been bracing for the repercussions since Scarif. _If you have what you need, make sure Erso doesn't make it to Demesel. We can't have her traipsing around in Imperial Territory with whatever information she has._

The younger man shakes his head. "The question is, Cassian, can you bring it to yourself to do it?" Bodhi steps away from the comm units. "Go make your message, or not. We're going to land on Demesel either way."

Maybe there's another course. Jyn's made up her mind about leaving for Demesel, and that's the only thing Draven doesn't want.

Cassian hovers over the long-range comm for a while before shaking his head and climbing down to the cabin.

 **This is it.** Above everything, Jyn is all but right. Her presence put them all at risk—not of death, but capture and that's just as bad. Finally, _finally_ , she gets to go in hiding and cry her way through her nightmares and the rest of the war.

She hated herself for telling them about the Death Star, when it was most likely for them to get caught and interrogated right there. She's been hating herself an awful lot today. It keeps her out of the hatch.

The whole day reminds her of the mess her memory labels Jedha. They end with a man dead, a city (or a suite) destroyed and Jyn Erso revealing something she never wants anyone to know. In separate cases, her real name and the Death Star 2.0.

And both times, the people she's with all start to treat her a different way.

Her holoprojector is warm in her palm. Jyn stares at it, but that's all she does. She's committed every single one of her father's transmissions—and it's a copious amount—to her memory. He can talk in her head as many times as he wants.

Jyn stows the projector in her pocket the moment Cassian jumps down the ladder into the main cargo hold. "I put your coat in your bag," she tells him. She won't have any use of it in Demesel. (The only reason she took it was to annoy him, but she doesn't see any good point in that either.)

"Most people turn away from public actions of the intimate sort," he says unusually fast, but Jyn catches it. At first she's confused, then it sinks. It's an explanation.

Jyn presses her lips into a fine line. "The kiss. Yeah. Don't think about it." She folds her fingers together into a wall between her and Cassian. "About the Death Star though, I didn't expect you to believe me."

"I believe you," he confirms. Cassian takes the seat next to her. "Are you sure about going to Demesel? You know the most about this new Death Star, you need to tell High Command yourself."

"Everything that happened today was my fault, Cassian," she tells him. "I can't keep blaming the Alliance or the Empire for everything that's happened, but I can't just start working with them either. Too much has happened."

He shakes his head. "There's no more righting of wrongs, Jyn. All we can really do is just stop the horrors. You said so yourself, there's a second Death Star. Help us destroy it."

"What's the risk?" Jyn asks him. "Cassian, I didn't tell you about the new Death Star on Hoth because the Rebels finally have hope. It took my father, and the weakness he snuck into the plans to bring that. This Death Star, my father had no hand in it."

She wets her lips to end her sentence. "Keep your hope, Cassian. That space station will be done before a decade passes, and we don't have the information or the time to track down the plans."

The landing gear dropping below them makes the entire ship shiver below them. They're on Demesel and Jyn's choices have already narrowed. "So you really are just going to run."

Jyn shakes her head. "Bad things happen to the people around me. But I never said I wasn't going to help. Some of my friends in the Coruscant underworld tracked an old copy of the plans all the way to Geonosis. I hope that gets you started, Cassian."

She stands up. "I can't make my father proud. Not anymore. That's up to you now." Jyn slings her bag tighter around her shoulder as she climbs up the ladder to the boarding ramp.

Never has Jyn been so sure. Never has Jyn been so steady.

The hatch in her head closes off as the boarding ramp rolls down to let in the Demesel air.

 _Run_.

Chirrut is painfully silent as he gives Jyn a hug. He nods softly when she pulls away, "May the Force be with you, Jyn Erso."

Baze gently ruffles her hair as Bodhi yet again attacks her into his embrace. She gladly returns both with a less enthusiastic, but still just as heartfelt, hug. For some reason however, Bodhi's attention is set behind Jyn.

When they finally let her go, she turns around to see Cassian and Kay-Tu. The view makes her smile, because for once in her life she gets to say goodbye.

She tries to hug K-2, and the droid backs away awkwardly. In the end, they agree on a handshake. "I hope you don't die, Jyn." It's the best kind of compliment she can get. She smiles.

Jyn turns to the only other person she hasn't said goodbye to. Cassian steps closer and Jyn stands up on the tip of her toes to plant a kiss on his stubbled cheek.

"I still believe it can be destroyed, Cassian. If you believe me, I believe in you."

 _It can be destroyed_ , Galen Erso says, _Someone must destroy it._

The grassland atmosphere of Demesel is only steps away.

"This is where I get off. May the Force be with you,—"

She takes the distance closer, and she turns around so that she's standing close to them and she can see them all around her. Jyn pauses to remember the de facto squadron name Bodhi told her about back on Hoth.

"—Rogue One."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have exams up so please enjoy a quasi-cliffhanger as i disappear letting you wonder what will happen next...


	15. A Ship in the Harbor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> — **It Takes One to Rogue One**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> April fools! Actually, no. The chapter gets pretty intense, and as per usual, aggresively un-beta read.

 

 **Bodhi cracks a smile at** the name. He doesn't exactly recall how he got the name. On Eadu, maybe, just before everything went down to kriff. And whether Jyn likes it or not, she might already be a part of that family.

"The nearest settlement is a day and a half out on foot," Cassian says. "We'd bring you closer but—"

"—Imperial territory," they say in unison: Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi.

She nods with a sad smile. "Goodbye." She doesn't pass a hug or a tear, because they've done it already. Jyn just turns around and begins that trek to the nearest colony.

She doesn't look back.

Bodhi looks over to Cassian. "So we both failed our missions, didn't we?" (Not that Bodhi counts his intentions to be a _mission_ , per se.)

The other man snorts.

"Why didn't you do it?" (Cassian should know what Bodhi means, no matter how actually vague the question is.)

 _Why didn't you kill her_ , he means.

Cassian is a rebel who follows orders. Bodhi didn't need to be at the debriefing of the mission to know Intelligence Protocol for extraneous informants that go out of their control. In the four years they've known each other, not once has Cassian failed to follow through.

They watch Jyn's dark outline fade into the greenery. Bodhi isn't sure if he sees a smile on Cassian's face or not. That kind of thing doesn't usually happen.

"She has Galen's eyes," is his reply. It doesn't sound like much of an answer, but Bodhi gets it.

As quick as it disappears, Cassian replaces his face with a mask. Honestly, did Bodhi expect anything else?

Cassian moves to close the boarding ramp of the ship. "I'm flying the ship this time."

Awkwardly, his hand stiffly pats Bodhi's shoulder. "You couldn't have convinced her to stay. She didn't want to go with you in the first place." _You_ , because Cassian didn't want to be on this trip either. He was in Cloud City for a mission, a mission he essentially failed by being unable to 'mitigate the threat Erso poses,' if Bodhi were to put it in the words Draven must have used.

"You could've tried, but you would've failed." With that, Cassian retreats up to the cockpit.

Bodhi was supposed to. He was supposed to try and convince Jyn to stay. He doesn't because there are a few—or maybe just one—fundamental truths he realized only that morning. The one thing he learned about Galen Erso's daughter: she blames herself.

He personally understands, but through the years he's learned that fault isn't a simple thing to place. Jyn needs to know that first if Bodhi is ever to blackmail her back on the ship.

If Bodhi hadn't asked Jyn for her credit chip, they would be on a Cloud Car right now touching the clouds. If Cassian didn't bring Kay-Tu, they might have been able to talk their way out of their detention flag.

If Bodhi hadn't gotten Jyn to come along, then he would never have borrowed the chip. (And, in extension, Cassian wouldn't have to go on this mission.)

If Jyn's house didn't get blown up… If Cassian didn't visit the memorial… If Galen hadn't died…

(Really, it all just boils down to Bodhi taking a certain message from Galen. A ship in the hangar is safe, but that isn't what a ship is for. Bodhi would have done the deed any way or not.)

Bodhi's main point is that Jyn can't blame herself, an opinion she made very clear when they were cornered in their hotel room. She needs to know that, but too much time around Chirrut has taught Bodhi that it isn't the kind of lesson you get from other people.

The more bad things happen, and the more she surrounds herself with others, the isolationism just gets worse. Nevertheless, and Bodhi quotes, _All is as the Force wills it._

Bodhi looks out to the viewport on the closed door, but the shadow of Jyn isn't there anymore.

Someone grabs Bodhi's shoulder and he half-jumps. Baze grunts from behind, "And here we hoped you lost your anxiety."

(It isn't an easy thing to let go.)

"I don't understand why you'd say goodbye," Chirrut spins Bodhi around with his hand. "This isn't a goodbye. We'd see her again."

The question is: after how long.

He shakes his head. "Let's just get to the cabin. Cassian needs therapeutic ship-piloting."

And as opposed to the norm, Cassian needs the therapy not because he killed yet another person (for the rebellion) but because he _didn't_ kill a person.

People are confusing and Bodhi prefers ships.

 **A year apart is not going** to change the fact that Major Andor acts erratically in the presence of Jyn Erso. (He is erratic either way if he is aware that Jyn Erso is involved, presence not required.)

 _Body language tense. Heart rate little to spastic._ The diagnosis applies to either. Today's goodbye is one Kay-Tu would name as _awkward_. But to be practical, the goodbye is _necessary_. (Jyn and Cassian's hug was awkward, yes. Necessary, _no_.)

It's in all their best interests that she goes into hiding. No one argues.

K-2SO is the practical one of the entire crew. It was once Cassian, but he has since let practicality go in favor of… something Kay can't quite identify. Companionship, which was once constantly forgone.

It takes some time, approximately four minutes, before Cassian somehow gets the motive to start up the cargo ship. They still have a while to travel, considering the relative gravity of Demesel. It's unsafe to go into lightspeed within a planet's force.

Kay rechecks the airlock (digitally, but what bothers) just as they fly out of Demesel's gravity. As they do, Bodhi hikes up into the cockpit. "We picked up something on the long comms. We have to go to the Haven."

_Approximately 38 hours travel in lightspeed._

Cassian's hand rests warily on the hyperdrive, but he doesn't pull the lever either way. "Is it a call for nearby spacecrafts?"

"Us," Bodhi replies. "Specifically. Well, you."

The man in the captain's seat heaves a sigh. He still doesn't pass a glance to Bodhi behind them. "Was it Mon Mothma?"

_Most likely._

"Private Rois sent the message," the pilot replies. "But it might've been Mothma's orders, I guess."

 _Probability of Cassian listening to said orders: 74.29%_ (margin of error: 26%, due to recent disobedience regarding Jyn Erso—further proof of her role in Cassian's induced deviant behavior.)

"Rois also said that Jyn has to be at the Haven, too." The man is smiling, Kay notes. No one truly understands practicality in this group.

So in summary, they are specifically being summoned from a hidden base in the dangerous suburbs of the galaxy, _thousands_ of parsecs away. They also need to bring Jyn Erso along with them, due to orders from the highest recesses of the Rebel Alliance High Command.

Despite probability of disobedience, K-2SO personally doubts those odds.

"Did they say _immediately_?" Cassian's blood pressure spikes four points above average: anxiousness. Truly, no one understands relevance—the tragedy of Kay's existence.

Bodhi nods his reply. "'As soon as possible,'" he quotes.

"What's the fastest, safest time to the rendezvous?" Cassian asks.

Kay computes. "38 to 43 standard hours."

"That soon is good enough," Bodhi comments. After that, the cockpit becomes spaces by one less fidgety pilot.

The major looks at K-2 with a look in his eyes that easily portrays a question. Kay doesn't know what that question is. Honestly, it's not as if he can read minds.

Cassian catches that fact quickly and silently. (How efficient.)

"Is Bodhi lying?"

K-2 would shrug if his extremities were designed to move in such a way. He can tell how conflicted Cassian is about this. He wants to, perhaps, but he might be looking for an excuse not to do it. "Unlikely."

Cassian sighs. It can be a sigh of relief, or a sigh of resignation. Either way, Cassian wants to go back down there and retrieve Jyn Erso—without getting anyone killed or anything destroyed, like any of the previous times.

"It is evident that no matter my analysis, there is no arguing with you," Kay flips a few switches before turning the ship back around. "But have you considered that there might also be no arguing with her?"

They begin their descent back into the atmosphere they just left. "You have a plan for that."

And honestly, Kay does. If those are the orders, K-2SO has been programmed to follow them even before Cassian got a hold of his circuits.

"How far would she have gone?" Cassian disengages the airlock once they're in the breathable atmo.

(Then again, Kay has never found necessity for breathing.)

"Not very far."

He earns a look for that comment. Not a good look either. Just proves that Jyn may be an unhealthy addition to Cassian's professional person.

He releases the landing K-2 points out ear with the computations already in his system. "If she continues a natural pace, no less that two kilometers."

Which puts her about 34 feet below them, to the diagonal at 13 degrees. Exact, of course. Kay-Tu was not programmed for approximations.

Kay points out from the viewport, where Jyn Erso squints up at them in her billowing black overcoat. Most likely, she will not be in the mood for a debate, and she will not choose to go with them. He stands from his copilot's chair to go down the ladder.

"My manhandling protocol may be required," he announces just as the ship lands onto the grassy plains of Demesel.

Cassian follows down the ladder, but does not argue.

Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze are standing around the door when Kay and Cassian join them.

"I would like to speak with her first," Chirrut asks. This statement was most likely triggered by Kay's arrival. Yet again, he is the practical one of the situation.

Cassian moves to open the boarding ramp. "Make it quick."

They agree on a party of Chirrut and K-2SO, a decision that took longer than need be. Jyn hasn't run yet though, despite every expectation. She is an anomaly, behavior continually unexpected.

"Has it been a year on Hoth?" Jyn shouts against the wind and roar of the cargo ship's engine. "Or did you accidentally give me the wrong directions?"

"Neither ar—"

Jyn holds her hand up with a silencing gesture. "Rhetorical question."

That explains much. Until given proper reason to do anything else, Kay-Tu can only watch and stay silent.

"You've only been here fifteen minutes, Jyn," Chirrut replies. "You're well on your way towards the nearest Imperial settlement,"—she visibly winces at the word _Imperial_. Kay assumes he should take offense at that—"We're here for other reasons."

She laughs. It's a strange reaction, and unexpected as per extrapolation. "I thought the goodbyes were over."

"I never said any goodbyes," the monk smiles. "I have a question: what do you hope to accomplish on your self-imposed exile?"

K-2 once asked a similar question to Galen Erso when they once met.

Her smile subsequently fades. Her heart rate rises, gradually. Her blood pressure, systolic to be precise, heightens just the same.

"There's a person you want to be, Jyn, but you're afraid to know her." Chirrut is being philosophical again. "You're looking for a home here, but you've already found it. And you keep fleeing from it."

Jyn crosses her arms over her chest. "You could've tried to convince me to stay before you dropped me off here, Chirrut."

"This argument of yours is getting tedious, Jyn," he replies.

(This conversation is tedious, Kay notes.)

Her eyebrows furrow. "It wouldn't be if you listened."

"A ship in the harbor is safe, Jyn," Chirrut spouts again. "But that isn't what a ship is for. This is a war, and you can help us fight it."

She scoffs. "I've done enough, to be honest. I deserve this."

K-2SO looks back to Cassian and Bodhi watching from the open boarding ramp behind them, hoping to pass the silent _I told you so_ humans are so adept at. Jyn and Chirrut are still talking, a repetitive conversation about going and staying, but Kay is still looking at Cassian.

There's a twitch in his face, an almost unnoticeable nod, and it's all the consent Kay needs.

He approaches Jyn less that carefully, enough that she can start looking wary. Before Jyn gets a word out, he delivers a well-computed blow to her neck, and in extensions her jugular artery. She crumples easily to the ground but Chirrut's reflexes are there to catch her.

"It was worth a shot," the monk shrugs as he lifts a comatose Jyn from the ground.

Cassian is there in less than two seconds, taking her body from Chirrut. (In K-2SO's own opinion, Chirrut could well have managed to carry Jyn a ten-foot distance without any difficulty. Yet again, practicality.)

"Try not to wake her until we get to the Haven," Cassian orders as they step aboard. He sets Jyn down on one corner of the ship, a terrible place to put her if they intend to keep her unconscious throughout the two-day flight service.

This means, of course, that they would have to keep her sedated. "Let's go."

 **When Jyn eventually comes to, her** senses are very much dead. On the upside, she had that one night of sleep where she hopefully had no nightmares. (She takes one more breath just to make sure she isn't breathing in the telltale scent of blaster oil and Cassian Andor.)

On the downside, her body sold function for sanity. She can't see. Can't hear. Can't feel.

"Should we put her back under?" Chirrut's voice comes from her senseless void.

Scratch that. She can hear just fine.

"No."

It's Cassian's voice. Further away, somewhere to her left. Jyn's eyes snap open as her mind reels with memory.

They _kidnapped_ her, essentially.

Chirrut's arm is there to lift up her body, and he sets her back upright on a stack of stiff pillows.

On an equally stiff bed.

In a clean room, flooded by industrial lighting.

"Where am I?"

The bed depresses where someone sits on its foot. Mon Mothma lays a gentle hand on Jyn's leg, the way her mother would prepare a bantha leg to cook. "The Haven of the Rebel Alliance," the rebel leader answers. "Good morning, Jyn."

_It's not morning anywhere._

"You've been unconscious almost two days now," Cassian tells her as he approaches her with a syringe in his hand. Jyn twitches at the sight.

The needle touches her forearm and sinks in with a sharp pinch. "It's a stim, to flush out the sedatives you've been put through." (Must've been a lot.)

She doesn't know how sluggish she felt earlier until the life comes back into her nerves. The damp feeling on her senses fades away.

"Kay controlled the doses, don't worry," he reassures her as the rest of the clear stimulant disappears into her veins.

Jyn's hand goes to her left arm, where the needle was introduced. Her eyes look to Cassian who has retreated back to the wall where he leans. "It's not the drugging I'm mad about."

He looks like he's about to reply, but shakes his head and thinks better of it. Mon Mothma takes the opportunity to talk. "I would like to speak with Jyn in private."

"She's unpredictable," Cassian argues. (Wow.) Chirrut just stands up and walks to the door.

Mon Mothma remains hardened. " _Alone_ , major."

Cassian resigns and joins Chirrut outside; but something tells Jyn that he'll be standing at the doorway all the same. (The thought of a doorway pushes a heated feeling through her face, and she only hopes she isn't flushing.)

Jyn swings her legs off the bed as Mon Mothma helps sit her upright, without the pillow wall support. "Sometimes, I wonder what person Major Andor would be, when the war is over."

(Jyn catches the _when_ statement, as opposed to a more pessimistic _if_.)

"War?" She leans on her arms, because pressure helps get rid of pain sometimes. "So you've given up on your hopes for a peaceful negotiation."

Mothma waves her hand dismissively. "I doubt I ever will, but that peacefulness is a dream. The detonation of Scarif started a civil war, and the Rebel Alliance has to fight.

"There's no negotiating anyway," the ex-Senator continues. "You of all people should know that the Emperor dissolved the Senate, and with them, whatever influence I had in the galaxy's politics."

_He'll dissolve a lot more, too._

Jyn pushes that thought away. She distracts herself with the thought of how clean the room is, how bright the lights are, how there're more than one bed. Most likely, she's in the med center, in the Alliance's 'Haven,' whatever that may be.

The though is worth having after all.

"I wasn't informed of Major Andor's mission until well after you left Hoth," Mothma continues into another topic, because they're at the pause of a war and there's no time for political small talk. "I sent a comm immediately one I was."

Now that effectively catches Jyn's attention. Not the stim that Cassian had just fed into her bloodstream, or the constant churning of a bacta tank she never realized was there.

"Mission?" She asks. "What mission?"

The rebel leader's face goes sour. "That would explain why you were brought here unconscious, with a severe dosage of sedatives in your body. I assumed you were half-captured on Cloud City, based on what Sergeant Rook had been telling."

Karabast. Jyn and Bodhi are going to share some words; maybe not even words in Cassian's case.

"His mission was basic Intelligence," Mothma informs. "Get information: from you."

Jyn presses her lips into a fine line and mutters, "Nerf-herder."

"I take it you told him something," the older woman assumes, and assumes correctly.

Of course Jyn told him something. Perhaps she didn't want to tell anyone in the first few days, but after seeing the state of the Rebels in Hoth, it became something she wanted to do—mission or not.

But still… to think that he _used_ her, for the purpose of the Rebel Alliance that's used her more than once before. (And Bodhi says Cassian has trust issues.)

Jyn has had dreams of sick versions of Eadu, where Cassian takes out the trigger and aims for her father, then aims for her. He's killed her more than a few times in a year. That doesn't mean Jyn hasn't had dreams of her killing him, because she blamed him for too long.

She knows she wouldn't be able to forgive him, so she chose not to blame him instead. Now he has a few other faults, and gets no impunity in her mind.

"It's confidential information, of course, and it will be discussed at the council later today," Mon Mothma says between brainwaves, "But I'd like to know firsthand, without the pressure of anyone else listening."

Anyone else listening? Cassian Andor may very well be at the doorway (again) right now listening in. But Jyn is well versed in the action of putting aside emotions: a survival skill for any rebel in the Imperial center. She can mentally murder later.

Jyn takes a deep breath. "The Empire is building a second Death Star."

The words get more tasteless as she says it again.

"I've seen plans handed out under dinner tables, and conferences hidden as party conversation. My father put no weakness."

Because Galen Erso can't.

_It makes me proud to think that you will fight where I cannot._

She knows he won't be.

Jyn studies her audience: the ex-Senator with a mask better than Cassian's. Someone is still listening.

"An old design of the Death Star has been kept in an abandoned Imperial station off Geonosis,"—everyone on the crew of _Rogue One_ know this—"But that won't be enough."

She pauses. "This is something easier said once." It's hard to explain, simple to grasp, impossible to forget. Jyn has muttered what she knows third time to herself in front of a mirror. The taste of those words remains the same.

"Then say them at the council, where you have no choice but to," the other woman carps.

That may be the point of this conversation. Right now, Mon Mothma has no choice but to listen to Jyn and believe her. Later, the council will have that choice.

It's a better compromise than anything, all because Jyn is afraid that she won't be believed. But she needs to tell someone, for the strait purpose of fulfilling her father's final wishes.

Mon Mothma stands up from the edge of the bed and hovers the button on the side of the door. She passes a glance to Jyn. "The council meeting is in a while. The major has been assigned to bring you there."

"There may be a second Death Star, Jyn, and I hope the Alliance believes you." Mon Mothma looks to be hesitating over the button, as if she has something she needs to remember.

Mon Mothma wipes some nonexistent dust from her flawless white robes. "And Jyn, I want you to answer a question, and I'll give you some time to think about it: If we do succeed in overthrowing the Empire, destroying that Death Star, and we survive, what kind of life would you lead?"

The door swooshes open; Mon Mothma and Cassian share hushed whispers out of Jyn's earshot. He asks, she nods; they walk away in separate directions.

"They're not going to let you stay in the medbay any longer," Cassian tells her. "You need to get ready. You're covered in dirt and you're meeting Rebel High Command for the first time."

Jyn stands from the side of the bed. "I didn't ask for either."

"Do we ever?" He gestures to the open door, to lead Jyn to the rest of this seemingly vast space station.

 **Cassian never usually gets front** row seats to any of the council meetings. On the occasions that he's invited (which he usually is,) the people usually sitting in this current seat are limited to generals, a certain princess, or perhaps her smuggler beau.

He half-hopes the Wookie hasn't been in this seat.

"Settle down please, everyone," Mon Mothma says over the chatter of all the rebels in the room. It comes to its desired effect. Even Bodhi has stopped bouncing in the seat next to Cassian.

Around the main table are the most notable figures of the rebellion: Mon Mothma; Admiral Raddus and Admiral Ackbar; Generals Draven, Cracken and Dodonna. General Rieekan would have his hologram if not for the limits of comm distancing.

Most Allied Senators are there, though they now lack the power of an actual senator since their dissolution. The most distinct lack they have, however, is the empty space Viceroy Organa once occupied.

Cassian thinks, that in some better version of the world, Saw Gerrera would be here and so would Galen, and Jyn wouldn't look either broken or murderous (stars forbid both.)

Draven speaks first, about the original operation. Whisper, he calls it. The informant relationship they established with Jyn and other Imperial-occupying rebels, and the "extraction" they had to officiate once the Empire caught her in the operation.

Cassian can see her jaw stiffen at the mention, because it's so blatantly a lie for the people who know. Still, Draven's ability to improvise a situation and turn the tales to their favor never ceases to gain Cassian's respect.

After that, Draven hands the figurative spotlight to the angry, small ball of fire standing around the table with him.

Jyn says what she knows as concisely, and as bluntly as possible. "Before the director was killed along with the rest of the people on the Death Star, he kept referencing something," she says, "Offhanded comments here and there about how my father's betrayal wasn't going to stop anything."

Her voice is too soft one moment and an explosion the next, but she has a way with words. In the spacious waiting room, her voice carries to every corner. The course of hours, Jyn explaining the monotonous year constantly researching into Orson Krennic's last threat to her, they pass into twos and threes, and the councilors grow restless.

Cassian doesn't. Deign to admit it, he can listen to Jyn's voice and the way her accent bleeds and mangles letters and words.

"The first key is in Geonosis," she approaches the projector to display a map of the galaxy. It shifts around star systems, over planet that looks dry even with the monochrome color. "There's an old Imperial research station, where the Death Star was being constructed before my father joined the operation."

Cassian knows this, of course. He was listening just a little bit into her conversation with Mon Mothma in the med room. He didn't mean to, but it was spy's habit.

"First?" Senator Jebel attacks her with questionings. It isn't a detail that Cassian might have caught quickly.

Jyn's eyes travel to Mon Mothma, then to him; and he knows that here comes that last piece of the puzzle that she didn't want to say, even in semi-privacy of an audience with Mon Mothma. "The schematics are split, because the Alliance can't be the only group of people getting smarter."

Cassian can feel Bodhi's eyes watching him. As if he can ask _Did you know?_ without ever saying a word.

Simply put, no, he did not know.

"I can't confirm this to be exact, but I've learned there are at least seven pieces of the plans," Jyn says with an unnatural calm unlike the flustered, secretive Jyn from the med room, or the resigned and impassive one in Cloud City. "And all of them are scattered around the galaxy, and Geonosis is the only one we know about."

From the corner of his eyes, Cassian can see Chirrut and Baze slip away into the brightly lit, but empty, halls of the Rebel's Haven. Bodhi follows after them. In front of him, Jyn is being completely professional about the fact that she was brought here as half a hostage, and that she's in the main base of the Rebel Alliance.

Based on everything she's saying, Jyn has been an independent spy on Coruscant. Of course she would be professional. If Cassian can do it for more than half his life, Jyn can definitely make it further with only a year.

Around him, everyone else is silent. Vague disappointment settles in Cassian; a sense that Jyn's words should carry more weight; because this is another Death Star they're talking about. No one steps up, no one argues but no one agrees.

"Tynnra Pamlo, former Senator of Taris," the ivory-hooded woman announces herself. The ex-senator seizes the floor, despite the soft murmurs from a dozen rebel subgroups focused on their own discussions. "When we were informed of the first Death Star, the term _crisis_ was a loose description. But we had your father's revolutionary assistance. As you've said so yourself, there is a second Death Star, and this time your father can't do anything. We all know what happened to Alderaan. This new planet killer is not only an existential threat to our Alliance, but to all life as we know it."

New voices rise in the background, soft against Pamlo's dauntless. "I say this with sincere regret and moral certainty: we _cannot_ in good conscience risk entire worlds for this cause." (Blast it, Cassian has sacrificed more than his own personal world for this cause.) "We know firsthand that the Empire will not hesitate to turn any weapon towards populated planets. There is no fighting it, because we don't have the plans. If there is something we can do, it's to scatter the fleet and disband military units. Save lives while we still can. We have no recourse but to surrender—"

The gathering's pretense of civility evaporates like water droplets on an engine block. Silent murmurs and arguments erupt into full-blown debates. Twenty or so grand speeches create dissonance as voices compete to be heard. The councilors throw rhetoric and retorts that they had been preparing since the meeting had begun.

Cassian catches fragments of proclamations and questions, each closer to anger him than the last.

"Are we really talking about disbanding something over one girl's word?"

"We can't just give in—"

"This was an Alliance, not a suicide pact!"

Cassian has been in this rebellion twenty-one years now. While he usually saves Kay-Tu for the numbers, he'd computed several possible outcomes of this event himself. _Surrender_ has never been on that list.

"The blood of Taris will not be on my hands," Pamlo's voice echoes from the fray. "There's already a war; but if it's a massacre you're aiming for, then you will fight without us."

Another haughty councilor, a man in blue, asks, "If that's the way it's going, why has this Alliance lasted so long?"

"Councilors, please!" Mon Mothma attempts to regain control. "We are all troubled by this situation, but I beg you to open yourselves to—"

It's Draven who interrupts next. "We don't even know if she's telling the truth! This could be a ploy, to lure our forces into a final battle. To destroy us once and for all. Who knows what happened on Coruscant? Who knows is she's become an Imperial within the year?"

Jyn is fire once again. "Who's to say you're telling the truth, General? I, of all people, know the truth about this 'informant correspondence' I supposedly took part in." Her eyes scan the crowd, and they land a second too long on Cassian's. They're wild, like a Galen lost in thought.

"I have never been part of the quasi-Imperial Whisper Network. That's something you should all know now," Jyn announces. "You should all be aware of what exactly happened on Eadu, how I reacted. I don't think I seem like such a strong person to any of you.

"In a rebellion, you don't have to choose a side. It's just a group of people against a belief you don't have to believe in. Neutral territory is still natural territory. This-this is a revolution. It's a fight, but I know which side I'm on. I can't stay in between, because there's crossfire now."

Senator Jebel calls. "The first Death Star posed half a threat with Galen Erso's assistance. But if the Empire has a new power, what chance do we have?"

Jyn's shouting, and maybe she doesn't even realize it. "What chance do we have? The better question is _What choice_? I was not pulled out of a hopeful exile to only accomplish nothing!"

It amazes Cassian how quickly she can shift from grieving, to passive, and to passionate within a single sentence. This is Jyn Erso's personal revolution. Not the Alliance's, but one born from the phoenix ashes of all the worlds killed in this war. Not retribution—resurrection.

"You give way to an enemy with _this much_ power and you condemn our galaxy to an eternity of submission. The Empire won't care if you surrender; it won't stop if you're hopeless. I once lost everything because I happened to be in the way"

"The time to fight is _now_ , while we're still a live to try. Time is still our ally, but every moment we waste is another step closer to Jedha and Alderaan!"

"Surrendering will get us nowhere," she says. "A ship in the harbor is safe, but not until the storm makes landfall." (The line sounds oddly like something Chirrut once said.)

That would have been a fantastic place to end it, but Jyn's on a roll and she isn't going to stop. "My father isn't here to guarantee you an easy way through this, but there are seven pieces of a Death Star puzzle out there. If I could find one in a year, what more can a whole team of rebels do?"

New voices rise from the crowd behind Cassian. "What is she proposing?"

"Just let the girl speak!"

So Jyn speaks. "We hunt down those puzzle pieces. I know the lower bound of the Rebel Intelligence network. We need to capture the second Death Star's plans if there's any hope of destroying this one."

Pamlo is near pleading. "You're asking us to run a massive spy operation, of such a high risk, based on nothing but hope?"

"Rebellions are built on hope," Jyn shrugs. Her eyes linger yet again on Cassian, just so that he knows exactly who she stole the line from.

The red-shirted Jebel speaks, like a prophet preaching to an audience. "There is no hope."

"Then there is no rebellion," Admiral Raddus pipes.

The arguing is reborn yet again, with calls for fight and calls for surrender filling the chamber. People push in and out of the fray that is the central table. Dozens of bodies struggle for a place there, so Cassian has to work to keep his attention of Jyn.

Mon Mothma approaches her with an unheard whisper along the voices of ten others. Then Jyn runs out of the room.

 **Jyn spots Cassian hurrying** after her in the bright maze of hallways beyond that mess of a meeting room. She's trying to retrace the map of a station she's never been in. She needs to find the hangar, she needs to be on a ship, she needs to get out of here.

"You didn't tell us there were _seven_ pieces of the plans," he catches up to her. Given, since he's been running around in a better physical shape than her.

She doesn't try to look at him. "I was hoping to hunt them down on my own."

But Mon Mothma offered to help. Jyn has never been a person to refuse help—unless she knows she can do it on her own.

Cassian doesn't say anything but when she turns a hallway, he grabs her by the arm and leads her down another fork. "The hangar is this way."

She doesn't argue. She's kept worse company. Though he's admittedly even better company when he doesn't talk the entire time.

There are X-Wings enjoying repairs, and transports receiving inspection checks. She's surprised to see Bodhi, Baze and Chirrut leaning nonchalantly on the side of a U-Wing ship. Cassian gives a nod and then he and Bodhi whisk themselves away into another corner of the massive base (though not as large as either of the Death Stars.)

"You don't look happy?" Baze says. (Chirrut interjects, "What does she look like?")

Jyn shrugs her answer. "The council prefers to surrender." Well, not every councilor, but it doesn't matter. _Without the full support of the council, the odds are too great._

"But you?" Baze remains somber and calm, but Jyn is aware of the warrior-esque exterior that he puts on at the warzones.

Chirrut gestures towards Jyn with his staff. "She wants to fight."

_Has she fought in a while? It's all she's ever done. It's the greatest answer she has, when nothing else tries to find meaning in her questions._

Only, for the past months or so, Jyn believes that fighting is the right choice. Geonosis first, and they'll figure out the rest.

"So do I," Bodhi steps in. Jyn tries to subtly scan the hangar, to check if Cassian is still around. He's left Bodhi and them all behind. "We all do," he stands closer to her side.

"The Force is strong," Chirrut says like a promise. Jyn hopes it is.

She looks at them: the orphan, the blind man, the killer and the coward, all in wonder and confusion. She doesn't know them, not the way they know each other. She'd half-expected never having to see them again after the washout on Eadu.

But they've fought together and nearly died together on Jedha. They've seen Jyn nearly fall off the ledge and become dust in a desert. They've seen her fall and claw her way back, and they're still _with her_.

The four of them look willing to take on the galaxy, smug smiles and all, no matter the odds and the probability that they won't even make it halfway to Geonosis. But Jyn can't help but smile, a small smile, subtle but real.

"I doubt the four of us are enough," she says. Personally, Jyn hopes Cassian would be here. She hopes that he'd be willing to put aside the Rebellion for this. (Also a rebellion, but the capitals make a point.)

Bodhi is smiling, a small joke he keeps for himself. "How many do we need?"

Baze's eyebrows quirk at her direction, and Chirrut is chuckling. Jyn's just confused. She turns around, to see Cassian there standing with a more than two dozen or so rebels.

"They could have believed you," Bodhi explains, "But the council would never have chosen to actually do anything. Especially after the 'seven puzzle pieces' thing. The odds were too great."

The familiar clank of K-2SO's feet on the ground. "6, 942 to one, to be exact."

Cassian is there in the center of it all. "We know it won't be quick. There might be seven pieces, and it took you a year to just find one. But if there's a chance, we have to take it."

Jyn looks to Bodhi at her side. The pilot shrugs. "It was Cassian's idea."

"I don't trust you, Jyn," Cassian says—completely turning down the mood of the event.

She rolls her eyes. "I thought you were on my side?"

He waves his hand in a silencing gesture. "I don't trust you, because who's to say you're telling the truth. You didn't tell us about the seven pieces because you wanted to hunt the pieces down on your own, so yes, I don't trust you."

Bodhi's face looks entirely disappointed in Cassian.

"But I did trust Liana Hallik," the major continues, "When she was pulling me through a warzone on Jedha. I trusted her because she tried to save lives. She tried to save mine. I trust her. I don't trust Jyn Erso, because as far as I know, she wants to save lives on her own."

She's so close to smiling at that point, because he brings the Jedha nightmare into a slightly better light. "And you're still Liana, because you needed a new name."

Her voice is gone, but her lips move along her mind. "Thank you," she mouths.

"You're not alone," Cassian continues. "We may be the worst company there is. Some of us—"

Jyn raises her eyebrows.

He corrects quickly. "— _most_ of us were spies, saboteurs, assassins. We've done terrible things for the rebellion. There are too many people we've seen die, let die and… sometimes made to die. Every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause I believed in. But I can't be willing to do anything for a cause that won't do the same for me."

And there it is. Jyn isn't a story; Jyn isn't a person.

She's a cause.

Jyn can't be a cause. She can't be a point for them to rally behind, something willing to forgive. Because Jyn can't forgive him, any of them, because then she'd have to start blaming them again.

They stare at each other for a while, as Jyn studies every color in his eyes. She isn't sure what Cassian's thinking as his gaze slowly approaches a thousand miles.

"I can't be the only pilot," Bodhi says as the tension snaps. "We'd all be cramped in one ship."

Cassian's eyes flick back to a specific direction. "I'll take one."

They talk as if this is something they've already discussed. Probably one of their grand talks while Jyn was heavily drugged in the cargo hold unconscious.

It's a wonder how quickly she stopped caring about what happened to her. (Not really. It's hard to forgive. It's a luxury not to care, and a luxury she doesn't have.) It's absolution, in a way. Something only her father had been able to give.

"But where are we going to go?" Jyn asks, "We can't drift in space, avoiding the Empire _and_ the Alliance while hunting down ghost plans."

Bodhi and Cassian share a mischievous look. "We have a place in mind," Bodhi says.

The man in front of her, who had volunteered for what will be the most helpless mission yet, looks at the relatively small group of rebels around them. "Grab what weapons you can, and the belongings I hope you prepared. Get in either my ship, or Sergeant Rook's. This will be a quick exit."

So this is the way it will be. Jyn is the cause; Cassian is the leader.

"Baze, Chirrut, you handle the airlock. You know what to do," he slings orders around in a way Jyn isn't familiar with. The rebels run around, because that's what rebels do: they follow orders.

It isn't as much chaos as it is organized. Bodhi bumps her in the shoulder. "Welcome to Rogue One."

They rustle into adjacent U-Wings, Jyn climbing aboard Cassian's. Wherever Bodhi and Cassian planned to go prior to this mini-mutiny, she's glad she's there. Baze and Chirrut are with Bodhi, and they act as if they're racing through space like two friends at flight school.

"We'll all die within a fortnight," K-2SO prophesies behind her, and she is never than happier to prove that droid wrong.


End file.
